* WARNING: THIS IS AN UNOFFICIAL, INTRODUCTORY COPY OF THE BILL.
THE OFFICIAL COPY CONSIDERED BY THE CITY COUNCIL IS THE FIRST READER COPY.
INTRODUCTORY*
CITY OF BALTIMORE
COUNCIL BILL R
(Resolution)
Introduced by: Councilmember Clarke
A RESOLUTION ENTITLED
A COUNCIL RESOLUTION concerning
title
Racial Disparities in the BWI Thurgood Marshal Airport Concession Program
FOR the purpose of supporting the efforts of Unite Here and the NAACP to address racial disparities and the lack of opportunities for minorities working in the concessions at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.
body
Recitals
Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, named for Baltimore native and civil rights pioneer Thurgood Marshall, is a key part of our region’s economy. As such, its business decisions have an important impact on overall economic conditions, and the solution of economic problems, here in Baltimore.
One of the most pressing economic problems facing our city is the concentrations of poverty in our African-American communities. Over 30% of Baltimore’s African-American residents live in poverty, and the median income for Baltimore’s African-American households is just 53% that of its median white household.
If this intolerable situation is to be rectified, it is essential that Baltimore have the full cooperation of all of her economic partners, especially keystones such as BWI, in combating racial income inequality. Unfortunately, a recent report has made clear that in at least one important area, it’s concession program managed by AirMall USA, BWI is systematically falling short in its efforts to be a good economic partner to the City.
This report, based on research and surveys conducted by Unite Here, found that although African-American workers make up the majority of the concessions’ labor force, they account for less than one-third of the highest paid and most visible front of the house positions. Instead, African-Americans are disproportionately concentrated in low-wage fast food and back of the house positions whose median wage falls below the federal poverty line for a family of three.
In fact, an African-American concession worker has an 83% chance of filling one of these low-wage positions, while a white worker has an 84% chance of working in a front of the house position with a median wage annual wage 44% higher.
Since more than 4 out of every 5 of the hundreds of African-American BWI concession workers live in Baltimore, this unequal treatment burdens our communities and perpetuates rather than alleviates the problem of poverty in Baltimore.
Further, despite the fact that Baltimore is nearly two-thirds African-American, and despite the existence of a federally mandated program to provide business opportunities for minority owned businesses and other disadvantaged business enterprises at BWI, only 3 out of 40 AirMall overseen concessionaires, a mere 7.5%, are African-American owned businesses. This troublingly low rate of African-American owned business participation in the AirMall managed concession program represents another missed opportunity to help alleviate Baltimore’s income inequality problem.
As Gerald Stansbury, President of the Maryland State Conference NAACP, says in his introduction to the Unite Here report, the racial inequality found in the BWI concession program is “an unacceptable outcome wherever it occurs. The fact that it is taking place at an airport named after civil rights leader and NAACP Legal Defense Fund founder Thurgood Marshall makes it the more egregious still. Thurgood Marshall spent his life fighting for civil rights and equal opportunity: from risking his life defending falsely accused African Americans in the Jim Crow South, to arguing Brown vs. Board of Education, to defending civil rights as the Supreme Court’s first African American justice, Marshall committed his life to battling inequality wherever he saw it”.
Baltimore cannot afford to have such an important partner failing to do its part in the struggle against inequality. If AirMall USA cannot, or will not, act to alleviate the troubling racial disparities in the concession program it manages at BWI, the State needs to step in and make whatever changes are necessary to see that this affront to the legacy of Thurgood Marshall is ended.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE, That the Council supports the efforts of Unite Here and the NAACP to address racial disparities and the lack of opportunities for minorities working in the concessions at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.
AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a copy of this Resolution be sent to the Governor, the Mayor, the Honorable Members of the Baltimore City Senate and House Delegations to the Maryland General Assembly, the Executive Director of the Maryland Aviation Administration, and the Mayor’s Legislative Liaison to the City Council.
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