LAX Workers Fast In Protest Of Allegedly Stolen Wages, Withheld Breaks

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Cabin cleaners, attendants and other workers at Los Angeles International Airport began a fast Monday to protest what they say is the practice of employers withholding breaks or stealing wages from their workers.

Nearly a dozen employees for two airport contractors, Aviation Safeguards and Scientific Concepts, are scheduled to subsist only on liquids inside Tom Bradley International Terminal for the next three days and sleep at a nearby church.

Tim Maddox, executive board member of SEIU-USWW, a union that represents many of the workers at LAX, said the two companies "are violating workers rights, whether it be around breaks, stolen break money," or refusing to negotiate union contracts.

Maddox, who works at LAX as a wheelchair attendant, said that workers are taking part in the fast to tell the two companies, airlines and Los Angeles World Airports, the city agency that operates LAX, that "we want responsible contractors, people that are going to do the right thing by the workers and by the public."

Scientific Concepts still has a license to operate at LAX even though the state labor standards enforcement department has fined the company $963,000 for wage theft, SEIU-USWW representatives said in a statement.

According to Maddox, Aviation Safeguards has been unwilling to enter into a union contract with employees.

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