http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/nyregion/minimum-wage-rift-may-lead-to-2-pay-scales-at-new-york-areas-airports.html 2016-09-20 18:10:16 Minimum-Wage Rift May Lead to 2 Pay Scales at New York Area’s Airports The airports are all run by the same agency, but New York’s governor has backed $15 an hour, while New Jersey’s governor rejected a bill to raise his state’s base wage to that level. === The governors of New York and New Jersey have taken starkly different tacks on the issue of raising the minimum wage, which has become a state-by-state battle in many places given that political gridlock in Washington leaves little hope for a change anytime soon in the federal hourly rate. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat, has fully embraced a union-backed campaign for a $15 minimum wage, but Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a Republican, vetoed a bill that would have raised his state’s minimum wage to $15. In fact, the rift between the governors is so wide that it may lead to a potentially fraught outcome — different pay scales for workers at the airports that serve the New York City area, even though they are run by the same agency. Airport workers have been agitating for an increase in their minimum wage to $15 an hour for more than two years. But the agency that operates the airports, the The Port Authority operates the region’s three major airports — But the monthly meeting of the board on Thursday promises a novel showdown. In what some Port Authority insiders say would be a first, the agenda for the meeting lays out competing resolutions on the issue of the minimum wage. Commissioners will be asked to vote on two options for changing the $10.10 hourly minimum that it set for its facilities in 2014. One calls for the Port Authority to reset to the higher of the two states’ minimum wages. The other calls for using the minimum wage that prevails in the state where the facility is, unless it is lower than $10.10. The difference could be quite large. The New York Legislature agreed this year to changes in the minimum wage that would raise it to $15 for workers in New York City by the end of 2018. New Jersey’s minimum wage has been $8.38 an hour since the start of 2015 and is scheduled to rise only to offset inflation. To go along with New York’s higher minimum wage, at least three of the six commissioners from New Jersey would have to vote for the first option. The chairman of the board, John J. Degnan, an appointee of Mr. Christie, has stated his reluctance to such a large increase in the past. Some of the other New Jersey commissioners have indicated a willingness to support a raise to $15 an hour, but how they will vote is not altogether clear, said Hector Figueroa, president of 32BJ Service Employees International Union. The union represents about 7,000 workers at the Port Authority’s airports who handle baggage, perform customer service and clean terminals and aircraft cabins. “It’s been a difficult campaign,” Mr. Figueroa said in an interview. The agency’s slow movement on the matter, he added, “shows that there is a rift, that there still is this debate internal to the Port Authority.” Union members have become regular fixtures at the monthly board meetings, pleading for higher wages and benefits, often in Spanish. Some of them grew angry and stormed out of a meeting in November after Mr. Degnan called for a study of the effects of raising wages. At the May meeting, Gertrudes Lopez-Ortiz, who cleaned United Airlines planes at Newark Liberty, told the commissioners: “For more than a year, I have come to these meetings and told you with tears in my eyes how I struggle to put food on the table because I earn so little money. And still you do nothing.” Last month, the Port Authority posted that study, conducted by Intervistas, a consulting firm, on its website. The study concluded that the effects of the 2014 increase to $10.10 an hour had been “mixed but relatively modest,” and that employment at the airports had grown since then. Intervistas cited the complication of the Port Authority’s policy of requiring that companies doing business at the airports charge customers what businesses in the surrounding communities charge. That “street pricing” policy could leave some merchants squeezed between a rising cost of labor, particularly in New Jersey because of its lower minimum wage, and a limit on how much of that increase could be passed on to customers.