A version of this news analysis originally appeared in the Inside Politics newsletter, out Fridays. Sign up here to get it first to your inbox.
Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, has a far-left mayor, Brandon Johnson.
New York City, the nation’s largest municipality, may be governed by self-described democratic socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary last week.
But in the nation’s 14th-largest city, Charlotte, the center still holds.
And last week, it was arguably the center-right holding.
Democratic Mayor Vi Lyles cast a tie-breaking vote against studying a proposed ordinance written by the Service Employees International Union. The ordinance calls for the city to “establish minimum standards for wages, benefits, and training for airport workers employed by airline contractors and permitted businesses.”
The SEIU has been pushing for higher pay and better working conditions for roughly 600 airport contract workers for years. The union says some contract workers — who do jobs such as cleaning bathrooms and airplanes — make as little as $14 an hour.
(The SEIU said it has been recognized by the National Labor Relations Board as the bargaining unit for workers at two airport contractors.)
Democrats Dimple Ajmera, Tiawana Brown, Renee Johnson, LaWana Mayfield and Victoria Watlington voted to send the issue to committee.
Democrats Marjorie Molina, Malcolm Graham and Dante Anderson joined Republicans Edwin Peacock and Ed Driggs in voting no.
Lyles’ tiebreaking vote makes the proposal moot — Charlotte won’t even take the anodyne step of referring it to a City Council committee for study.
The issue is complicated.
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On one hand, the City Council recently raised the minimum pay for city workers from $23 to $24 an hour. The airport contract workers, however, are not covered, even though they work in a city-owned facility, performing difficult, unpleasant tasks (working in the heat hauling trash around the airfield, cleaning toilets, etc.)
Surely, at an airport that handles nearly 60 million passengers a year, there is enough money to pay contract workers at least, say, $18 an hour?
The state prohibits the city from setting a minimum wage for private businesses, but council members don’t have to pick the lowest bidder to contract for airport work. They could, in theory, select a company that pledges to increase pay and working conditions, even if there is no way to enforce that.
But there is a flip side.
Charlotte Douglas International has become American Airlines’ second-largest hub, in large part, because the city keeps costs low. The airline industry has extremely tight margins, and American isn’t doing a very good job at making money these days, especially compared with its two main competitors, Delta and United.
American has its own contracts with workers that are separate from many with the airport. But any increase in airport expenses is ultimately paid for in part by the airlines via landing fees, with American footing most of the bill.
If pay were increased to $18 an hour, SEIU certainly wouldn’t stop there. For instance, hotel workers in and around Los Angeles International Airport are set to be paid $30 an hour by 2028 — a decision that has touched off fierce opposition from businesses.
The NC Chamber urged Lyles in a letter to reject the SEIU request. Charlotte business tycoon Johnny Harris penned an op-ed for the Charlotte Ledger calling the close vote “a dangerous departure from the collaborative model that made Charlotte thrive.”
City Council members also said they are worried about the Republican legislature reviving a 12-year-old bill that would transfer CLT from city ownership to an independent authority.
City Council member Malcolm Graham talked about the need for the city to “play chess” with Raleigh, especially with legislators voting the same week on the city’s multibillion-dollar roads/transit bill.
(Graham, however, did vote in favor on the same night of removing Tesla from a list of preapproved cars the city could buy. While that vote was much lower stakes than the issue of airport workers, banning the purchase of Teslas is still a rebuke of President Trump, his erstwhile ally Elon Musk and the GOP. Was that a smart move with the city’s transportation bill pending?)
Council member Marjorie Molina told the crowd of SEIU supporters, “I don’t want it to be misstated that this is something that says this isn’t being fair to the people who subcontract at the airport. That is not what this message is saying.”
She then noted that the city increased the pay of its own employees in the most recent budget, although that doesn’t do the airport contract workers any good.
After a contentious debate, council members deadlocked 5-5 on whether to send the issue to committee.
Lyles then tallied up the votes. She said only four council members voted in favor of the SEIU request and five voted against it. That meant it failed.
Brown corrected her.
“It’s five and five. You have to vote,” she said to the mayor.
Lyles responded: “I’m going to take the position that this is not ready for us to have on the agenda. We have to work a little harder on it. I will vote with the majority.”
Brown again jumped in.
“It’s not a majority,” she said. “You are breaking a tie. Let’s have correct English here.”
Lyles' explanation — that more work needs to be done — raises a conundrum for the SEIU supporters.
A City Council committee is where that work is supposed to happen. If not that’s not allowed, then where does the work take place?
Former City Council member Braxton Winston, who is working with SEIU, said he “doesn’t understand what the mayor is saying.”
“That’s what we’re asking you to do, to work on this,” he said.
