=20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=3D/c/a/2005/11/29/BAG4LFVBL4= 36.DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Tuesday, November 29, 2005 (SF Chronicle) Skycaps, an endangered species C.W. Nevius If you stop by the airport during the holidays, you might want to offer season's greetings to your local skycaps. My guess is you won't be seeing them much longer. Oh, there will probably be skycaps. And someone will probably grab your suitcase. But the chances are it won't be the old familiar faces. And it is definitely going to cost more. You may not have noticed, but a nasty little economic struggle is taking place outside the airport check-in counters. At the Oakland and San Francisco international airports, signs posted at United, Alaska, and American airlines announce a flat fee of $2 per bag for curbside check-ins. What the signs don't say is that the money doesn't go to the person who hefted your bags. Want to tip the skycap? That's extra. "I took this job for the tips," a gloomy 12-year veteran at the Oakland airport said during what should be the busiest stretch of the year. "I'm down 30 to 50 percent." "Really?" says Alaska spokesperson Amanda Tobin. "We haven't heard that." Yeah, well, wouldn't you think it would make sense? Passengers are paying $2 a bag already. Does it seem logical that they would then add another couple of dollars for the same service? Apparently it does. "We think of it as kind of the same concept as valet parking," says Robin Urbanski, spokesperson for United. "You pay for the parking and then you add a little extra for the valet. What we've found, particularly in San Francisco, is skycaps going out to the curb, helping with bags. They are really working for their tips instead of having them expected." That's the optimistic view. A cynic might say that the average skycap is either working harder for less (an extra tip is still less likely after a per-bag fee) or is doing the same job as before for fewer dollars. It should be said that as handy as it would seem to make the airlines the bad guys in this, that isn't exactly true. As Tobin says, "curbside service is not a money-maker." Very little of the per-bag fee goes to the carriers. It goes instead to vendors who contract out the skycaps, along with security and other airport services. The vendors pay the skycaps a small salary with the expectation that the porters will be well-tipped. Officials for Premium Service Management, which has the SFO contract, and Huntleigh USA, which serves Oakland's airport, were unavailable for comment. There is no skycaps union, which is why none of the baggage porters I talked to was willing to put his or her comments on the record. If they complained, they said, they'd be likely to get into trouble or be fired. But you may as well get used to the flat fee. Urbanski says United has t= he program in 15 airports now, and "the intent is to be 100 percent" at all United locations. Alaska, which started the fee program as a test in Seattle in July 2003, now has added it in Portland, Ore., Palm Springs, and Oakland. Other locations and airlines will surely follow. "This is all part and parcel of the ridiculously low air fares," says Chris Pummer, a freelance editor and former business columnist for Marketwatch.com. "These guys were a throwback to the old regulated airlines. The fact is, this was a luxury job for a luxury era." Pummer made quite a splash three years ago when he wrote a column listing the "Ten Most Overpaid Jobs in America." (He is still hearing from angry airline pilots and wedding photographers.) Among the top 10 was skycap. Pummer claimed that, with tips, a skycap at a major airport could make $75,000 a year. (A skycap with more than 20 years experience says that's possible, but hardly the norm. And, he adds, "I went home a lot of times with $15 in my pocket, too.") As a comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average salary for a skycap is $31,700. That's supposed to be including tips, but it is safe to assume that a lot of the tip income wasn't reported. But now that cash from passengers will be shipped off to a vendor in another city. Wouldn't you rather it go to the person who picked up your bag? Personally, I can't work up the requisite outrage over the allegedly high wages. At least it was a profession, not a minimum-wage job. My concern wasn't how much they were making for standing outside in all weather, hauling luggage. It was that if I gave them a couple of bucks they'd not only handle my bag, but find my flight, give me a boarding pass and direct me to the gate. Now who will be doing that? John Moran, a labor attorney who sued United Airlines to leverage a bett= er deal for the baggage porters in Chicago, thinks he knows. "High school kids are the only ones who are going to do that job," says Moran. "We're going to have (misrouted) luggage going all over the United States -- and you're going to pay for that." C.W. Nevius' column appears Tuesdays and Saturdays in the Bay Area secti= on and on Fridays in East Bay Life. E-mail him at cwnevius@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---= ------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2005 SF Chronicle