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Last month, a group of five workers and supporters were arrested outside the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport for impeding traffic while rallying for better working conditions. The arrests occurred during a demonstration of about 200 workers and supporters on September 19th. After a short march, airport workers and SEIU union officials gave speeches speaking about the abysmal working conditions at the airport and calling for paid time off, affordable health insurance, wage increases, and water.

The arrests of the five workers and supporters demonstrate the function of the police as the armed enforcers of the interests of the ruling class. In this case, they were called in on behalf of the airline corporations to stop the disruption of their profits, but the same protection from horrendous working conditions will never be afforded to the workers.

The workers who spoke at the rally last month are not directly employed by the airport but are subcontracted by American Airlines from a company called Jetstream Ground Services. Subcontracting is a tactic airlines use to diminish wages to the lowest amount possible as they compete to lower labor costs. The company that can make the highest profits is the one that has the lowest labor costs. “I have to decide between putting gas in my car or feeding myself,” said one worker, who said her coworkers regularly are forced share meals with each other because otherwise they’d go hungry.

However, it is not just wages that are cut in the endless chase to extract more from their workforce. The airlines, just like all companies, look for any means possible to make an extra buck at the expense of working conditions. At the rally, one worker told the crowd that she had to be transported out of work in a wheelchair and taken to a hospital due to severe dehydration and heat exhaustion. She was among the airport workers arrested.

The Charlotte Regional Business Alliance states that Charlotte-Douglas International is the world’s seventh busiest airport, and American Airlines announced a record profit of a whopping $14 billion last quarter. This is not only unique to American Airlines and Charlotte-Douglas International: across the country, companies are making record profits while the wages and purchasing power of workers stagnate. These profits are only afforded to these companies’ shareholders because their workers routinely face long hours and overwork. The harder they are pushed, the higher the profit margins.

Last month’s demonstration was part of a larger campaign by the SEIU to call on Congress to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration’s “Good Jobs for Good Airports” Act, which would increase wages along with putting certain measures in place to attempt to improve working conditions. While they can bring slight improvements, reforms are unreliable and can easily be reversed due to the nature of our current system. Corporations, due to their immense wealth accumulated off the backs of the workforce, are able to buy off politicians and lobby for laws that favor their interests, entrenching their power and giving them the ability to undermine reforms at a later date. Therefore, the only way for workers to ensure their wins aren’t reversed is to fight for their own power, through building revolutionary trade unions independent of the parameters of the state who will arrest at even the smallest signs of rebellion.