Item
LaGuardia’s Ghost Town
Title (Dublin Core)
LaGuardia’s Ghost Town
Disclaimer (Dublin Core)
DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.
Description (Dublin Core)
For my primary source, I selected a photograph I took of the gate house area in LaGuardia Airport in mid March of 2020. In the picture it shows several employees, sitting around doing nothing at all, the whole airport was a “ghost town”, meaning there were no passengers to assist with there tickets and gate claims, or any questions in general. During this time we were all nervous, not just nervous about COVID-19 and from the horrific scenes in the news, but also as an 11 year veteran in the airline industry, our jobs were on the line because of the decrease in flying, fear of flying, and the travel restrictions of no flying. With the airline burning 35 million dollars a day how can they pay 80,000 employees system wide I told myself. The airline soon told us system wide that it’s recommended we take a leave of absence at least a year with no pay to save the company or else there would be cuts, not including the 25% cut in our salary we took already.
All week I was on the phone with my work partner talking everyday trying to figure what’s the plan. All these thoughts came racing three my head. What are we going to do? Do you think we will be fired or let go since we have seniority? Why I didn’t finish college 13 years ago and became lawyer or something. My job made us an offer, hey said take the year off with no pay, and your still have flying benefits for you and your family as always, and you will still have full medical benefits and we will pay your medical as well. After talking with my family, my fiancé, my partner from work, I decided on March 26th 2020, I was going to take the leave of absence. A whole year later April 26th of 2021 I finally came back to work full time, and the airport passenger count is starting to increase.
The reason why I seated this primary source is because I would like historians to know the insides that us airline employees faced during these challenging times. I know many airline companies asked Congress for help in payroll support for the employees which majority of them did get including us, but we never saw that payroll support, nor did they call us back Early to work since they got some kind of support from the government, instead that money went in the stock market, and for bonuses to the CEO, and managers in the company. While I am happy and very fortunate to be back at work, it was very challenging as I’m sure it was for everyone, but one good thing that came out of it, 13 years later, a year ago from today. I was able to join the family of bronx community college, and focus on my education while I was off.
All week I was on the phone with my work partner talking everyday trying to figure what’s the plan. All these thoughts came racing three my head. What are we going to do? Do you think we will be fired or let go since we have seniority? Why I didn’t finish college 13 years ago and became lawyer or something. My job made us an offer, hey said take the year off with no pay, and your still have flying benefits for you and your family as always, and you will still have full medical benefits and we will pay your medical as well. After talking with my family, my fiancé, my partner from work, I decided on March 26th 2020, I was going to take the leave of absence. A whole year later April 26th of 2021 I finally came back to work full time, and the airport passenger count is starting to increase.
The reason why I seated this primary source is because I would like historians to know the insides that us airline employees faced during these challenging times. I know many airline companies asked Congress for help in payroll support for the employees which majority of them did get including us, but we never saw that payroll support, nor did they call us back Early to work since they got some kind of support from the government, instead that money went in the stock market, and for bonuses to the CEO, and managers in the company. While I am happy and very fortunate to be back at work, it was very challenging as I’m sure it was for everyone, but one good thing that came out of it, 13 years later, a year ago from today. I was able to join the family of bronx community college, and focus on my education while I was off.
I am a student taking online classes.
Date (Dublin Core)
May 20, 2020
Creator (Dublin Core)
Jeremy Montalvo
Contributor (Dublin Core)
Jeremy Montalvo
Event Identifier (Dublin Core)
HIS20
Spring2021
ProfessorCulkin
Partner (Dublin Core)
Bronx Community College
Type (Dublin Core)
photograph
personal essay
Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)
English
Travel
English
Transportation
English
Aviation
English
Business & Industry
English
Labor
Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)
air travel
New York City
employee
pay cut
salary
essential worker
New York
LaGuardia
ghost town
Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)
LaGuardia
airport
airlines
ramp worker
ghost town
Linked Data (Dublin Core)
Date Submitted (Dublin Core)
05/18/2021
Date Modified (Dublin Core)
05/20/2021
06/25/2021
11/02/2023
Date Created (Dublin Core)
05/20/2020
Format (Dublin Core)
format/jpeg
Rights (Dublin Core)
CC-ND-NC 4.0
This item was submitted on May 18, 2021 by [anonymous user] using the form “Share your story- Bronx” on the site “Bronx Community College New York”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/bronx-community-college-new-york
Click here to view the collected data.