ST. LOUIS – Passenger service employees at American Airlines and members of the Communications Workers of America-International Brotherhood of Teamsters Association held an informational picket at St. Louis-Lambert International Airport on Tuesday to demand a new bargaining agreement.

“We just want to be appreciated,” CWA Chief Shop Steward Carleton Smith said. “Fair contract, job security, things that we all want here in America.”

Workers said negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement have stalled for 10 months.

They want a contract that guarantees job security, worker safety, adequate pay, and better working conditions.

“We need a contract,” said Arianna Gray, a customer service representative. “We haven’t had a contract in four years, and as much as we do for this company, we need to get things negotiated.”

CWA-IBT said workers haven’t received a raise in almost four years. American Airlines earned a profit of $1.3 billion last quarter.

“I’m primarily at the ticket counter. So, we do a lot of check-ins, a lot of international document verifications, and every country is different,” Gray said. “So, it’s like we’re relied on to make sure everybody has everything that they need.”

In recent years, passenger service agents have had to deal with an increase in unruly passengers, flight delays and cancellations, putting gate agents, other airline employees, and other passengers’ safety at risk.

“We want to make sure that we are getting paid fairly; we want to make sure that we have quality health insurance; we want to have clean language about our expectations; our scope of work,” said Catherine Stalinski, a customer service agent.

American Airlines sent FOX 2 the following statement on the picket:

We continue to have collaborative and productive discussions with the CWA-IBT and look forward to reaching an agreement that ensures our team members are paid well and competitively with quality-of-life provisions that are important to our team.

Tim Wetzel, Global Engagement & Corporate Communications