Originally posted on itsourairport.org By Nate Jackson
Sifredo Flores, a Fueler at Sea-Tac airport, pulls up his sunglasses and starts telling the on-duty manager of Alaska Airlines why he and 25 other community members came out to talk.
“I’m a fueler. I work hard, but ASIG doesn’t have any respect for us,” he said. “We have to work whether it is rain or snow, sick or well and the equipment we use doesn’t always work.”
Flores drives a truck that takes the fuel out to the Alaska airplanes. He’s is one of many fuelers who work for ASIG, the fueling contractor.
On a typical refueling he and other fuelers at our airport are hauling out over 10,000 lbs of high grade airplane fuel--in trucks that have shoddy brakes. Workers report that many of the trucks have emergency brakes that give out, defrosters that refuse to deice the windshields and other problems that make the act of hauling highly flammable fuel even more dangerous.
Flores continued.
“We do the work,’ he said. “We do it and the fuel gets soaked into our uniforms. We have to take our clothes home and wash them in our own family washing machines. It’s not right.”