Less Travel Means Steep Job Losses in Miami-Dade

In all the years that Carole Ann Taylor has operated in Miami International Airport, business has never been so bad, and for so long. 

Taylor, who has operated at MIA since 1995, has had to close two of her four stores. Most of her neighbors in the airport terminals have closed stores as well.

“We all recognize that, even more so than 9/11, this is going to take a while,” Taylor said. “It’s going to take a long time for airport concessions to return to normal.” 

The pandemic has hit Miami hard, and its impact is causing ripple effects throughout the county where, as of Nov. 22, there are 147,439 fewer jobs than there were last year at this time. 

According to the Miami-Dade County Aviation Department, the number of passengers arriving and departing at MIA declined 59.3% compared to last year. The number of passenger flights has also been slashed by 51.4%. Those figures, which stretch from early January to mid-November, do not include Thanksgiving.

There are fewer airlines operating out of MIA, too. Prior to March, there were 60 carriers flying in and out of the airport, said Greg Chin, communications director for Miami-Dade Aviation. As of mid-November, there were 26. 

The reduced airport traffic has turned large swaths of the airport into a ghost town, with dozens of shop windows shuttered, particularly in its pre-security areas. In March, there were 240 stores, restaurants and services at MIA, but as of mid-November only 72 concessions were open, Chin told Biscayne Times.

“I don’t think anyone anticipated that when the pandemic started that we’d be here where we are today,” said Chris Korge, CEO of Newslink, who has had to close nine of its 12 newsstands operating at MIA. He said the county has been very understanding, even waving base rents from MIA concession tenants until the end of December. However, Korge, a former lobbyist, also said concessionaires will need to extend that waiver and ask for a contract freeze, in order to avoid further economic hardships.

“We are reaching a critical point,” he said.

Those requests will come before the Miami-Dade County Commission in mid-December. 

Airlines are hurting as well. Randy Trautman, president of the Miami arm of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants union, said airlines have lost their business and cruise line travelers, while international travel is minimal. With “demand off,” airlines are trying to lure travelers back with very low fares.

“We’re losing $25 million a day,” he said.

Sobering Stats & the People They Represent

Miami International Airport and “related aviation industries” contribute 275,708 jobs “directly or indirectly to the local economy,” MIA’s website states. 

Chin said he doesn’t have any statistics on how many employees have been laid off, furloughed or seen their hours reduced from the private companies operating at MIA. However, thousands have jobs that have been lost or suspended at American Airlines, which operates 75% of the flights leaving and departing MIA, making it by far the area’s largest carrier. 

In an email to Biscayne Times, Laura Masvidal, American Airlines corporate communications manager, explained that more than 13,000 “team members” are based in South Florida. Out of those members, “approximately 2,000 Miami-based team members were impacted this year.” 

Those impacted team members include 301 furloughed American Airlines pilots based at MIA, stated Dan Koller, communications editor for the Allied Pilots Association, via an email. Those Miami fliers were among 1,224 pilots furloughed companywide since Oct. 1, “which was the earliest date an airline could furlough employees if it accepted Payroll Support Program funds as part of the CARES Act,” Koller explained. American Airlines received $25 billion in CARES funding to keep employees on payroll until Sept. 30. Koller added that he expects more pilots to be laid off after Dec. 1, “but we don’t know how many.”

Trautman said 3,600 Miami-area flight attendants were actively employed in January and that, as of November, there were 1,800 to 2,000 “less heads” after flight attendants were furloughed, laid off or went into early retirement. Figures on other Miami-based American Airlines employees could not be obtained by press time, although he said it was the flight attendants who took the brunt of the airline’s job losses.

Helene O’Brien, Florida director of the 32BJ chapter of the Service Employees International Union, said around 6,000 people worked for airline service providers that supply subcontractor workers for airlines to help clean, provide security, handle baggage and other tasks – jobs that typically pay between $13.88 and $17.45 per hour. O’Brien said between 20% and 50% of those workers have not been “put on schedule” since the pandemic began.

About 400 of those MIA subcontractors who were laid off or reduced to just a few hours a week worked for Eulen America, the largest service provider at MIA which, prior to the pandemic, employed 1,800 people. 

O’Brien claimed the layoffs and hour reductions were in retaliation for SEIU’s efforts to unionize Eulen’s workers, even though the company received $25.8 million in CARES Act funding for payroll. SEIU also organized demonstrations against Eulen for the lack of personal protection equipment the company gave its cabin cleaning staff at MIA and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, for which Eulen was fined $50,000 by OSHA in October 2019.

Julie Jimenez-Padron, vice president of Rbb Communications and spokeswoman for Eulen America, insisted that the company provides PPE for its employees to protect them from COVID-19 as well as heat, chemicals and noise, as “required by specific job functions.” 

Jimenez-Padron stated that the “dramatic loss of revenue” facilitated the layoffs, and declared that “any claims of retaliation are without merit and one of the many falsehoods being spread in a campaign of aggression by the SEIU,” adding that the company’s goal “is to rehire as many of our former employees as possible.” 

“To date we have rehired 130 employees at MIA,” Jimenez-Padron wrote in an email to Biscayne Times. “Employee hours vary based on the position and are in line with pre-pandemic staffing schedules.”

Struggling to Boost Tourism in Miami

Rolando Aedo, chief operating officer for the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau, said 80% of the people who visit Miami-Dade come through MIA. 

“It is the key driver of our visitors by far,” he said. 

MIA also operates more international flights than Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Aedo added. Thanks to the rampant spread of COVID-19 in the United States, foreign nations have restricted flights in and out of the country. That has resulted in a 67% drop in international flights at MIA for the period between January and September of this year as compared to last year, according to statistics from the GMCVB. Domestic flights for that same period are down 52.8%. 

The reduction of visitors traveling to Miami-Dade has cost the hospitality industry $3.4 billion between the months of March and August, according to a study headed by Florida International University’s Chaplin School of Hospitality and Management released on Oct. 21. During that time period, hotels lost $1.3 billion in revenue, while restaurants were shorted $742 million. Hotel and restaurant employees, meanwhile, saw their paychecks and tips shrink by $783.8 million. 

But Aedo said the GMCVB is “starting to see some encouraging numbers,” at least among domestic visitors. In April, domestic flights were 95% lower in 2020 compared to last year. But in September, domestic flights were just down 60.1% compared to last year. 

The GMCVB is also starting to book conventions at the Miami Beach Convention Center once again, Aedo said, and it’s launched the “Miamiland” campaign to convince people in the U.S. that Greater Miami is a safe place to visit.

“One of the programs is positioning Miami as the most international destination within the United States, a place where you can visit without having a passport,” Aedo said.

And even though Miami-Dade County’s COVID-19 cases continue to rise, Aedo is encouraging visitors to stay outdoors, where the coronavirus is less likely to be transmitted.

“We have three national parks. We [have] a variety of regional parks,” he said, adding that Miami is “well positioned” for such a promotion given the region’s subtropical – and snowless – weather.

Another promising sign, Aedo said, is that Southwest Airlines inaugurated flights to MIA on Nov. 16. As part of its expansion to Miami, Southwest Airlines is transferring 55 “ground operations team” members to Miami, stated Southwest Airlines spokesman Brian Parrish.

Trautman told Biscayne Times that American Airlines is starting to add more flights for the holiday season.

“We seem to be moving in the right direction and getting flights back in the air,” he said.

Still, it’s unclear if those extra flights will mean the reactivation of furloughed flight attendants. Because of the coronavirus flare-up in Britain, Miami-to-London flights might be discontinued in December.

“That is like 100 jobs right there,” he sighed.

Hoping for Federal Relief

With the prospect of normalcy still uncertain, concession operators at airports across the nation say they need some assistance from the federal government in order to survive.

Rob Wigington, executive director of the Tennessee-based Airport Restaurant & Retail Association, said concessions at airports all over the U.S. have been devastated by the pandemic.

“We are gradually seeing business come back, but some businesses may be making 50 or 60 percent of what it was previously in 2019,” he said, and added that airport shops and restaurants furloughed up to 70% of their employees.

“Until traffic starts to come back … they can’t hire people back. Federal relief is going to be critical,” he said.

Wigington also said that while airport restaurants and shops were left out of the last round of airline-related COVID-19 relief funds, the association is “hopeful” and “anxious” that they’ll be included in a $3.5 billion package.

Peter Amaro, CEO of Master ConcessionAir, a joint partner for 50 stores and restaurants operating in MIA, agreed that a relief package is needed, but he’s not sure it will be passed anytime soon.

“We are still hoping Congress and the Senate can get their heads together and [pass] the package they’re entertaining,” he said. “But as long as there are differences of opinion on who is the president-elect, and who will be the president in January, we are going to be on the back burner.”