Airline bans tips for skycaps at Logan

American Airlines skycaps were outraged yesterday to learn the airline had posted signs telling customers not to tip them. The airline said the skycaps will be receiving raises instead. (David L. Ryan/Globe Staff)

American Airlines, which lost a federal lawsuit filed by skycaps at Logan International Airport over tips they earn, ratcheted up the feud yesterday by imposing a ban on tips at the Boston airport.

Nearly four weeks after a federal jury ordered it to pay a group of nine skycaps more than $325,000 in lost tips, the airline put up cardboard signs yesterday outside its terminal. A message printed on a yellow rectangle informed passengers that they are prohibited from tipping skycaps who help check in luggage at the curb for $2 a bag. The ban applies only to Logan.

Within a few hours, skycaps who for decades gladly accepted tips were telling passengers they could not accept them.

"They turned a tipping job into a no-tipping job within one day, within one hour," one skycap, who insisted on anonymity because he feared reprisals from his employer, told the Globe.

American Airlines issued a statement saying it enacted the policy in response to the April 7 verdict in US District Court in Boston. "American's customers in Boston who wish to utilize the convenience of curbside check-in can still do so and pay the existing $2 per bag check-in fee collected by American or its third-party vendor, G2 Services," the airline said. "However, tipping will no longer be allowed."

Skycaps who violate the new policy could face discipline, said Tim Smith, an American Airlines spokesman.

The airline, which has asked the trial judge to throw out the verdict, also said that G2 Services, the subcontractor that employs most American Airlines skycaps, is raising their pay to $12 to $15 an hour, well above the state's minimum wage of $8 an hour. Most skycaps currently earn $5.15 an hour.

Smith said the raise and ban on tips would remove the skycaps from the list of workers who are covered by the state's tips law, but the skycaps' lawyer disagreed.

The skycaps said the raise will not give them wages nearly as high as what they received before September 2005, when the airline imposed the $2-a-bag fee. A skycap testified in court that he sometimes made $200 a day in tips but that his income plunged after the fee started and customers were reluctant to tip on top of it.

"To me, this is retaliation for the fact that we stood up to a big corporation," another American Airlines skycap, Ritson Desrosiers, said yesterday, moments before officials from G2 Services and American Airlines told him not to speak to a reporter. Desrosiers, one of the plaintiffs in the suit and a skycap for 15 years, was awarded $48,958 by the federal jury.

The skycaps' lawyer, Shannon Liss-Riordan, said she planned to ask US District Judge William G. Young to order the airline to rescind the tip ban. She said she was unaware of any other airline in the United States that has banned tips for skycaps. The policy was especially galling, she said, given that the jury concluded the airline had broken the law partly by hindering the skycaps' ability to make a living.

"American doesn't seem to understand what it is they lost in court," Liss-Riordan said. "This is further interference with the skycaps' ability to make a living."

The ban puzzled and angered several American Airlines passengers who tried to tip the skycaps but were rebuffed.

"It's disgusting," said Scott Cornwall, 61, of Tavares, Fla., who paid $6 to check in three bags and tried to give the skycap an additional $9. Cornwall and his spouse, William Opperman, were visiting Massachusetts, where they wed four years ago, and said, "Nobody should be able to tell us what we can or cannot do regarding tips," he said.

June Banzhaf, 68, a retired registered nurse from Hooksett, N.H., said it was wrong that a skycap could not accept a $5 tip she offered after paying $4 to check in two bags.

"This is a service so you don't have to wait in line" at the ticket counter, said Banzhaf, who was taking a flight to Dallas. "He was very nice," she said of the skycap. "It was very speedy."

The unusual dispute stems from the lawsuit that the skycaps filed against the airline in December 2006.

The suit was the first legal challenge of baggage fees imposed by several airlines in recent years because of declining profits, particularly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. American Airlines said it imposed the fee at Logan and other airports after losing $821 million in business in 2004.

After deliberating two days, the jury ordered the airline to turn over to the skycaps all the fees for the baggage they had handled since September 2005. The skycaps have also asked Judge Young to triple the damages as a result of a state law passed last month concerning awards issued by juries for violations of wage-and-hour laws.

On Monday, the airline filed a motion asking the judge to throw out the verdict. American based the request in part on the fact that eight of the nine skycaps who were awarded damages worked for the subcontractor, not American Airlines.

Then the airline put up the signs yesterday next to the curbside check-in kiosks.

Smith said that although skycaps who violate the policy could be disciplined, he denied that employees are being singled out.

He said other employees are barred from accepting tips, including ticket agents who check bags. He also said the skycaps' new hourly wage is "very much in line with the type of job that [the skycaps] are performing, their educational level, experience level."

But Liss-Riordan, who has brought at least 40 lawsuits on behalf of service workers in Massachusetts, said the airline is mistaken if it thinks it can legally stop the skycaps from receiving tips by raising their hourly wages. She said waiters have won suits alleging violations of the 1952 state law that protects tips-dependent workers even if they earned more than twice the minimum wage.

"This is an occupation that has traditionally been tipped," she said. "They can't make them non-tipped employees by putting up a sign and declaring them to be non-tipped."

Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jsaltzman@globe.com.