FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, May 1, 2026
Collation Representing Logan Airport Workers Rallies on May Day to Demand the Right of Assembly
After speaking program with Senator Markey and Congresswoman Pressley, hundreds of workers prevented from completing a march to the airport, but Massport promises to review current policy
A video of the speaking program is available HERE courtesy 32BJ SEIU
Photos, courtesy 32BJ SEIU: Wide angle ; close up
BOSTON —May Day opened in Boston with a rally and march by a new coalition of ten unions representing thousands of Logan Airport workers, united in their demand that Logan’s public authority loosen its restriction on the size of public actions at the airport. Calling themselves the Coalition of Logan Airport Workers, or CLAW, the group distributed lobster-themed headbands, foam claws, and bandanas to the hundreds of union members who gathered this morning in East Boston Memorial Park, and the attendees accessorized their individual union signs and t-shirts with the orange swag as they gathered before a small stage featuring a placard that proclaimed the event’s theme: “CLAWing back our rights.”
Currently, Massport allows no more than ten people to publicly demonstrate at Logan, a much smaller number than many major airports will allow, and one that has made it far more difficult to combat the unprecedented strains experienced currently by the airline pilots, flight attendants, food service workers, baggage handlers, and other Logan workers represented by the coalition.
Speakers Rouse Hundreds of Attendees
After a brief set by musician-activist Evan Greer, the event opened with elected officials, community activists, and union members laying out those issues, as well as the overarching theme.
“I just want to say, in May of 2023, we did an all-picketing event across the United States,” said APA former Vice-Chair Gemma Meehan, representing the 16,000 pilots of American Airlines, “In Dallas, we could have 700 people; here in Boston, we could only have ten. Massport needs to increase that!”
Two speakers with 32BJ SEIU next described the healthcare crisis facing thousands of workers at Logan and beyond.
“We are here together because we are both fighting for new contracts with employer paid healthcare,” said Faneuil Hall security officer Stanley Wotring, who came to the stage with Logan wheelchair attendant Raja Hamed, neither of whom can afford the high cost and of their employers’ health plans. As a result, Wotring is on MassHealth, though he’d prefer “to save taxpayers the expense of doing what our bosses should do.” Hamed, who doesn’t qualify for the state insurance, simply goes without care, despite a condition that requires monitoring every six months. “I don’t know what’s going on in my health,” she said.
Two community activists from La Colaborativa then described the many ways the federal government is assaulting immigrant rights, and Logan cabin cleaner Saint Paul Paul described how that assault has also rocked Logan airport.
A TPS recipient and asylum applicant from Haiti, Paul spoke of losing his job when the Trump administration canceled the customs seals of dozens of Logan workers with provisional yet perfectly legal immigration statuses last year.
“The letter I got from Customs and Border Protections on June 30 said I was an ‘unacceptable risk’” said the father of five, who now works in a local restaurant and has less time for his children. “I think ‘unacceptable risk’ is caused when you cancel the jobs of important airport workers suddenly, without a good reason.”
Paul has now joined with other Logan workers and their parent union, SEIU, in a lawsuit seeking a reversal of the dismissals.
“It is an honor to be here with my partner in Congress, the great Ayanna Pressley, because we are fighting for you against these attempts to roll back all of the protections for unions, for working people in our country,” said U.S. Senator Ed Markey, who celebrated the coalition’s creation as a demonstration of recognition that, “The flight attendant and the food service worker are in the same fight.”
As if on cue, the Senator was followed by Delta flight attendant Katie Lovett, who spoke about the ramifications of the AFA’s fight to organize the only major airline without a flight attendant’s union. “Our campaign isn’t just for Delta flight attendants. As the largest private sector, single-vote union election, for nearly 30,000 employees, our win [will be] for the entire working class. We are the labor movement taking flight.”
United Club food attendant Lida Jimenez next spoke about her own fight to change her working conditions because of a painful hand condition, and how it connects with the larger fight for all workers. “We all want fair wages, great health insurance, and a safe workplace,” she said through an interpreter.
Laura Rotolo, of the ACLU of Massachusetts, broadened that common struggle into the “existential fight” against the Trump administration’s attempt to roll back rights generally, including the right “for babies born in the United States to be U.S. citizens” and the right to free and fair elections.
“The only thing to take down a tyrant,” she concluded, “is people power.”
The event’s last major speaker, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, brought the theme home, first by mourning the recent Supreme Court decision limiting the Voting Rights Act, then by rousing the crowd with her insistence on the power of “a multiracial democracy” to ultimately prevail in the struggle for dignity.
March Stopped at Airport; Dialog Promised
After the speaking program, attendees began to march toward nearby Logan Airport with plastic drums beating, marchers chanting, and a small horn section from musical activists BABAM performing New Orleans-style marching music. The column was met at the edge of airport property by a Massport official, backed by a few state police officers, who ordered it to stop.
Union officials at the head of the march then spoke briefly to the Massport representative, after which 32BJ SEIU Executive Vice President Kevin Brown declared on a bullhorn that the airport representative, “committed that they will review the policy so that airport workers can protest with more than ten people at a time. We are going to demand that we can have hundreds of workers to meet to protest as we need to at Logan Airport for the things we deserve!”
With a huge cheer, the crowd then turned back into the park and the union gathering ended, at least for the day.
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The members of the Coalition of Logan Airport Workers are: the Allied Pilots Association (APA), the App Drivers Union (ADU), the Association of Flight Attendants CWA (AFA), the Association of Professional Flight Attendants (APFA), the Communications Workers of America – International Brotherhood of Teamsters Association (CWA-IBT),the International Associations of Machinists (IAM), the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine and Furniture Workers/Communications Workers of America, IUE-CWA Local 201, the Transport Workers Union of America, Unite HERE Local 26,and 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), with the support of the Greater Boston Labor Council (Affiliated with the AFL-CIO),.
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With 175,000 members in 11 states and Washington DC– including 20,000 in Massachusetts and Rhode Island–32BJ is the largest building service workers’ union in the country.