The SeaTac/Seattle Minimum Wage Project: Campaigns

The SeaTac Campaign

In 2005, Alaska Airlines fired nearly five hundred union baggage handlers and replaced them with workers employed by contractors. Whereas the unionized work force had earned around thirteen dollars an hour, the new employees working for a host of private contractors lacked union representation and earned only about nine dollars an hour. Building on the momentum of the Occupy movement and campaigns for low wage restaurant workers in multiple locations, SEIU 775 spearheaded a large, diverse coalition of unions, workers’ associations, faith groups, and community organizations to support Proposition 1 mandating a $15 minimum wage for all workers in the small town of SeaTac, the home of many low wage workers whose jobs were directly or indirectly dependent on the airport. The Proposition passed barely in November, 2013, and it went into effect in January 2014. The Washington State Supreme Court ruled in August, 2015, that workers at SeaTac airport were legally entitled to be included in the city wage policy.

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