How service workers struggle as the economy transforms

It's 11 on a Friday morning, and Betty Schueler is sitting in her mobile home, glancing nervously at her cellphone. She's off today from her job as a server in a bar at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, but her shift manager still might call at any minute to tell her to come in.

“Am I going to be lucky?” wonders Schueler, 59, sitting in a comfy armchair in the trailer she shares with her sister in Severn, Maryland, three miles from the airport. “And I want to answer, because maybe, miracle of miracles, they'll say, ‘We need you to come into work today.' “

Those calls are the welcome ones. On her regularly scheduled days — only three a week lately, since her hours were cut to part time — management might call to say things are looking slow, so don't bother coming in after all, which makes life tough at the end of the month. Especially when you're making $3.63 per hour, plus an unpredictable amount in tips.

“I might be able to make a hundred dollars,” she said. “I might not.”

That's not how things used to be, said Schueler, a brash talker with a big smile who's worked at BWI her entire adult life. When she was younger, she could count on steady income, guaranteed work and benefits. Enough to support a decent life — not lavish. But, Schueler said, it started to change in 2004 when BWI underwent a management shift — one that generated more business and created more jobs but left some longtime employees with meager wages and less steady hours.

In some ways, what happened at BWI echoes what was happening across the country: Employment has rapidly increased over the past decade in service sectors such as retail and restaurants, but wages have lagged behind and insecurity has flourished, explaining in part why the recovery hasn't registered for many Americans.

Here's how it played out for Schueler. She worked for a company that operated all of the airport's shops and restaurants for 32 years and helped organize with the local hospitality union in 2003. But the next year, the state handed the concessions contract to a new company, later named AirMall, which leases spaces to other enterprises. The stratified management makes it harder to organize for higher wages, and business turnover makes it difficult to depend on an airport job for very long.

Schueler and other workers have pressured the Maryland Aviation Administration (MAA) to impose higher labor standards, as it has with other state contracts. That type of pressure has worked in Los Angeles, where the airport authority enacted a higher minimum wage. Although Maryland government officials have expressed support for the idea, changes haven't gained traction. The MAA says it's happy with the increasing revenue BWI has been generating since AirMall took over.

Schueler had always imagined going to work at BWI. She was born in 1954, not far away, when all she saw was farmland surrounding a little airstrip. In the 1970s, after high school, she got her first job there as a cocktail waitress. It came with decent benefits, full weeks, long shifts and good tips. She would even go to the airport some days to socialize with friends.

At that time, the shops and restaurants were run by the airport concessions arm of Marriott International, and staffing was completely centralized. Business came and went over time but rarely disrupted the livelihood of workers. “When one side of the airport was slow, and the other side was busy,” Schueler said. “They always managed to keep the workers.”

By 2003, Schueler was making $8.75 an hour, plus tips, which totaled about $45,000 a year. That year, she and several hundred fellow workers joined the hospitality union, Unite Here, hopeful that by organizing they could further improve their quality of life.

But other forces were about to turn against them. Then-Gov. Robert Erlich, R, turned over management of BWI's stores to a company called the British Airports Authority, which was renamed AirMall when it was sold to a private-equity company in 2010. The hope, in part, was to finance capital improvements through boosting revenue from concessions, which would allow the airport to better compete for business from the airlines.

Rather than running each business itself, BAA operated BWI like a shopping mall, competitively soliciting tenants and allowing them to set their own wages and working conditions. Today, there are about 75 outlets across BWI. Some companies own more than one, but most are individual operators.

As a result, the union says it is not practical to negotiate with every business individually, and wages and labor standards can vary widely.

“You're adding another layer of management that needs to get paid, and you're also reducing the amount of accountability,” said Bhav Tibrewal, an organizer with Unite Here.

AirMall notes that the business model has nearly tripled the number of concessions jobs at BWI and says employees often receive better pay than they would outside the airport. According to its data, tipped employees make $19.22 an hour when gratuities are included, and hourly non-tipped workers make $9.74 on average. The company leaves many practices up to the operators of the airport's stores and restaurants.

“Really, we have no relationship with the workers,” said Brett Kelly, vice president of AirMall, “in the same way that the management with Tysons Corner would have no relationship with the people who work at Crate & Barrel.”

Cheri Cernak, whose family runs O'Brycki's restaurant in the Southwest terminal, said she seeks to pay her employees a higher wage. Everyone is full time, cooks start at $10 an hour and she thinks her waiters make $17 to $20 an hour including tips.

“If you pay less wages, you're not going to get people willing to do a good job for you,” she said. “If you want to present your business at its best, you need to treat your people well.”

According to the union, O'Brycki's is the exception.

Over the past year, scores of workers have shown up at hearings and on union picketlines to talk about unpredictable hours at very low wages.

And with so many renovations over the past few years, employment has been unstable. In March, for example, a Sam Adams restaurant closed down to make room for construction. About 15 employees were laid off, and only a handful found new placements within the airport.

For AirMall, churn is a natural part of the business model.

“Part of what you enjoy is that there are new offerings,” Kelly said.

As Schueler has learned, turnover can be rough on workers.

When the ownership of Schueler's bar changed in 2012, it shut down and laid off all the workers. Schueler couldn't find another job, which she suspects might have to do with her union activity. In the meantime, unemployment checks weren't enough for her to live on. Her savings of $55,000 vaporized.

After a year and a half, she got another position, at Phillips Seafood, at a reduced number of hours, earning the state's tipped minimum wage of $3.63 an hour, plus tips. (Phillips Seafood's parent, HMSHost, did not respond to most questions about its employment practices.)

Schueler said her monthly wages now amount to a few hundred dollars a week. Her sister's food stamps have helped a little, but there's nothing left to spare.

“Everything I built up for decades, I lost,” she says.