Newark Airport: Feds Reach ‘Precedent-Setting’ Baggage Settlement With United Airlines

NEWARK, NJ — Being a baggage handler at Newark Liberty International Airport can be hazardous to your health. From 2011 to January of 2015, the airline’s baggage handlers reported at least 622 musculoskeletal injuries, according to federal safety officials.

That’s why officials say that the U.S. Department of Labor sued United Airlines, which maintains a hub at the busy New Jersey airport and controls a large majority of its take-off and landing slots.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that it reached a “precedent-setting agreement” with United Airlines that will help to “protect its employees from future injuries by improving its baggage-handling operation.”

The agreement settles a lawsuit filed by the department on behalf of its Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) after federal inspectors found “several hazardous conditions” affecting United’s baggage-handling operation at Newark.

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According to OSHA officials, five hazardous activities and conditions in United’s baggage-handling operations allegedly contributed to the high rate of injuries at Newark Airport:

• Employees exposed to repeated bending, lifting and reaching hazards due to the presence of tubular bollards in front of conveyor belts.
• The use of dual-tier conveyor belts to transport baggage in the outbound baggage room that required employees to bend over or reach overhead to access and lift baggage.
• Manually loading and unloading gate-checked baggage at passenger jet bridges in the regional terminal.
• The use of hand-held scanners at the cargo bay entrance that exposed employees to the hazards of repeated twisting, pushing, pulling and lateral motions with the arm extended from the body.
• Prolonged loading and unloading of baggage in confined areas of the aircraft cargo bay.

As part of the settlement, United Airlines has agreed to install mechanical conveyor belts on the passenger jet bridges located throughout its regional terminal, OSHA officials stated.

“Mechanical conveyors will reduce employee exposure to known hazards by eliminating the need for the handlers to lift and lower passenger luggage to and from the jet bridges manually,” OSHA officials stated in a news release.

Federal officials said that United must also retain a qualified expert to perform an evaluation of potential repetitive stress or injury risks in baggage-handling operations at Newark Liberty and make recommendations to improve worker safety.

Under the terms of the settlement, the airline must adopt the expert’s recommendations or similar measures to reduce the risk of repetitive stress injury, as well as form a dedicated safety committee comprised of the expert, management and employee representatives.

United has 90 days to complete the evaluation and must implement all recommendations within two years of the settlement agreement. The agreement gives OSHA authority to monitor the evaluation and abatement implementation process, officials said.

“This settlement will have long-term safety implications for the baggage-handling industry,” said Jeffrey S. Rogoff, the department’s regional solicitor in New York. “As one of the world’s leading airlines, United Airlines is setting a workplace safety standard that other airlines will be compelled to follow.”

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