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Airport workers take crucial step toward forming union

Airport workers took a significant step forward in their three-year effort to unionize Wednesday, as more than two-thirds of Logan Airport’s baggage handlers, wheelchair assistants, and cabin cleaners declared that they want to join 32BJ Service Employees International Union.

Community volunteers and officials of the Labor Guild, a Weymouth labor-management relations organization, counted signed union cards in the basement of the Paulist Center near the State House, then announced that 859 of nearly 1,200 workers support joining the union.

“You are not invisible anymore,” union president Hector Figueroa told a room packed with more than 100 workers and supporters. “The fight for justice for airport workers begins today.”

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But the next step in the process could prove to be more difficult: getting the 10 contractors who employ the workers to recognize the union and negotiate a contract.

Because 32BJ SEIU opted for what is called a card check instead of an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board, the employers are not legally obligated to negotiate with the union. Some of the Logan contractors have never talked to the union, while others have told them their hands are tied by the airlines, who tend to hire contractors with the most competitive rates.

The SEIU has been using the card-check process for decades because elections can be subject to lengthy delays, during which time employers have been known to fire prounion workers. Signed union cards, on the other hand, are collected throughout the organizing process. A card check signifying that a majority of workers want to unionize should carry the same weight as an election with NLRB, labor analysts say.

Several airport contractors — G2 Secure Staff LLC of Irving, Texas; Flight Services & Systems of Cleveland; ReadyJet Inc. of Cleverdale, N.Y.; and Airway LLC in Rockville Centre, N.Y. — declined or did not respond to requests for comment.

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If the airport contractors do not recognize the union, 32BJ officials said, the union will escalate its campaign, reaching out to more elected officials, recruiting more workers, and possibly organizing strikes. In New York, where 6,000 of the 10,000 workers at the area’s three airports signed union cards in May, workers walked off the job Wednesday to protest what they said was a contractor’s unfair labor practices.

Years ago, many airport jobs were unionized, but as airlines outsourced work to cut costs, union jobs dwindled. Unionized janitors and other workers who do similar work around Boston make between $14 and $17 an hour, Figueroa said, compared with the $8-to-$10-an-hour wages of their counterparts in the airport industry.

The SEIU began its organizing campaign at Logan in 2011, talking to workers, speaking out at airport board meetings, and holding rallies to show the benefits of joining a union. On Wednesday, as Labor Guild officials announced the result for each contractor — “From G2, we have 290 confirmed signatures. Out of 330. That’s almost 90 percent” — the workers cheered, and the cry went up: “Si se puede, si se puede.” (“Yes we can”).

Judith Mendez, a customer service agent wearing a button that read, “Poverty wages don’t fly,” said that her husband had just been deported and that she was trying to support three teenagers on her $9-an-hour salary. Mendez recently had to apply for food stamps, she said, and is now preparing dinner for her children on an electric hot plate after her gas was shut off because she could not pay the bill.

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Milka Santana, 60, a baggage handler, makes $9 an hour after seven years of service. “The companies soon will have to take off their masks and sit down with us and talk to us about the rights and dignity that we deserve,” she said, speaking in Spanish.

Former Massachusetts governor Michael S. Dukakis stopped by to support the workers’ efforts, saying unions and a higher minimum wage are the key to shrinking the wage gap. “For the last 25 or 30 years in this country, folks, the wages of working people have either stayed flat or gone down,” he said. “The folks in the top 5 percent have done very well. But working Americans have not done well.”

The real power to effect change lies with airport authorities, Figueroa said, because they have the ability to set standards that the airlines and subcontractors have to follow.

The Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan Airport, said it takes workers’ concerns seriously. Last week, airport officials met with airlines to advocate for raising wages and giving fair treatment to unions’ organizing campaigns.

Unions are facing an increased challenge in trying to unite the growing number of contract and franchise workers who work at multiple employers, said Benjamin Sachs, a labor professor at Harvard Law School.

“So much of the economy is becoming fissured and subcontracted,” he said, “that it is becoming more essential, and more common, to organize unions in this way.”

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Katie Johnston can be reached at katie.johnston@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @ktkjohnston.