Welcome to the Sioux Falls Airport, your low wage tour of our city starts here.
Ever stare at the person behind a (customer service) counter and wonder how they could be so incredibly miserable, ignorant or apathetic? Ever think that maybe because they have to put up with people like you all day when they don’t make a living wage, or they have several part-time jobs like this just to pay their health insurance and get by. Maybe they are not stupid, maybe they are zombified into exhaustion.
Recently a friend of mine told me that one of the airlines contracted at the Sioux Falls Airport suddenly lost their contract. They got dinged on something, my friend thought maybe it was for screwing up on baggage delivery too much. Either way, another airline is replacing them.
The worst part is that the airline that is leaving only paid $10.16 an hour to it’s customer service reps BUT they offered free travel benefits and even their part-time employees could buy into reasonable health benefits. They also offered a $.50 raise after a short review period.
Not a living wage, but at least their were other benefits to subset the crappy hourly.
The new contractor isn’t having it. Not only are they starting anyone who wants to come to work with them from the old contractor (you have to go through an interview first) a lesser wage (I believe $10 an hour) NO raises for almost 3 years and NO health benefits to anyone who works under 30 hours a week. The rumor going around is that they will have no one working over 30 hours a week.
I find this all ironic with the recent proposal to take money from essentially the airport authority to pay for infrastructure for wealthy companies to come into our community. Maybe the airport needs to figure out ways (fees) so they can pay their workers more? While we can hoop and holler all we want about our world class airport, in reality it is being ran by poverty wage workers, while the rich developers and shakers in town are trying to squander the money for wealthy corporations who can pay for their own infrastructure (and should). If they can’t and are not willing to provide a living wage, why do we even want them here? I would rather see Foundation Park grow slow and provide solid jobs, then to pop up over night with trailer parks and low income apartments surrounding the area with it’s workers.
Sioux Falls certainly has an image crisis, and it has to do with the kind of wages it is paying to people. You get what you pay for, a miserable, ignorant, apathetic and an exhausted workforce being squandered by the greed of few who have to have secret and possibly illegal meetings with local elected officials to get their plans pushed through. They were foiled this time.