Local Perspective

‘They have nothing’: How a $20 tip cost an immigrant her Dulles job and severed a lifeline to Sierra Leone

By Theresa Vargas Columnist August 1 at 2:41 PM [link:theresa.vargas@washpost.com|Email the author]

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For 20 years, Jalloh has worked at Dulles, and for the last 14 of those, she had held two jobs there, cleaning the airport at night and pushing people in wheelchairs through its terminals during the day. Both jobs have meant spending all but 7½ hours most days at the airport. But it also meant she could afford to pay the rent for an apartment in Herndon she shares with three people and still send money to Sierra Leone. ... That changed in May, when she was fired from the wheelchair job. ... Her supposed offense: Asking for a tip. ... Jalloh denies doing so but said it doesn’t matter because she was not allowed to defend herself and no investigation was done. She showed up to work one day, she said, and was told she no longer had a job. The ease in which that happened speaks to the vulnerability of low-wage immigrant workers who can stand on seemingly steady ground for years, or even decades, and with the slightest kick, feel it crumble beneath them.

Wheelchair agents, unknown to many in the public, are paid based on the assumption that they will earn tips, and yet they are not allowed to let passengers know that. Many of these workers were earning as little as $7.25 an hour before the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority’s board in January started requiring companies that do business at the Dulles and Reagan National airports to pay contract workers a base hourly wage of $11.55. Jalloh said even so, she was earning $10.45 an hour, with the understanding that $1.10 was being deducted because of tips.

These workers are also not protected by a union, despite a nearly three-year push to organize and multiple worker strikes, the most recent occurring in December. Jalloh believes her activism in support of a union is the real reason for her firing. ... At least four immigrant women have been fired at the airport in recent months, according to union organizers. They all worked for the same Texas-based company, Huntleigh USA, and they all claim they were not given a chance to defend themselves. One woman was left unable to pay her rent in the D.C. area or her mother’s hospital fees in her native Ethi­o­pia. She and her mother were both facing eviction when co-workers pulled together funds to help, one union organizer said.
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Jalloh insists that she has never asked for a tip, even when she has been handed nothing, or a single quarter, which happens. ... The tip that led to her firing she said came from a couple from Saudi Arabia flying first class. She said her managers never spoke to them or they would have known that the only discussion that occurred about money took place between the couple and in Arabic. Jalloh said she and another wheelchair worker had taken the couple to where they needed to go and once they stopped, the man pulled out a $20 bill for them to split. Jalloh said she would have been grateful for that amount but that the man’s wife then said something to him in Arabic, and he pulled out two $20 bills, one for each worker. ... Jalloh said she walked away from the encounter happy, thinking it was a lucky day.

Theresa Vargas is a local columnist for The Washington Post. Before coming to The Post, she worked at Newsday in New York. She has degrees from Stanford University and Columbia University School of Journalism. Follow https://twitter.com/byTheresaVargas