Airport Workers to Demand Paid MLK Holiday

Contracted workers at the Port Authority’s three metropolitan-area airports -- including Newark Liberty International -- will appear at the bi-state agency’s Manhattan headquarters Thursday to demand better wages as well as to give workers a paid day off on the next Dr. Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 20.

Workers believe their situation is comparable to that of the Memphis sanitation workers who protested poor working conditions with King’s support. King was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers’ action when he was assassinated in 1968.

The workers include employees of private contractors Airway Cleaners/Allstate Maintenance, PrimeFlight, AirServ and Aviation Safeguard, who are asking for the paid holiday as a gesture that the Port Authority will address their larger concerns about wages and benefits.

Also Thursday, 300 middle-school students from Newark and throughout Essex County will take part in an invitation-only event, the “World Against Violence (WAV#18) Conference at Caldwell College in Caldwell.

The young participants will take part in a series of breakout sessions, including “Critical Thinking for Today’s Youth,” “Etiquette Skills for the 21st Century” and “Don’t Shoot, I Want to Grow Up.”