IN Brief:
- Alliance Ground International is facing formal safety complaints covering JFK and LaGuardia operations.
- The complaints include allegations involving tugs, forklifts, flooding, PPE, training, heat protection, and cargo warehouse conditions.
- The case puts air cargo handling safety, labour oversight, and outsourced airport operations under renewed scrutiny.
Alliance Ground International is facing formal worker safety complaints covering cargo warehouse, ramp, and ground-handling operations at New York’s JFK and LaGuardia airports.
SEIU Local 32BJ has filed complaints with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on behalf of 21 AGI workers, including 14 at JFK and seven at LaGuardia. The allegations cover cargo facilities at JFK Buildings 21 and 77, Post Office Building 250, and cargo and former passenger operations at LaGuardia.
The complaints allege problems with airport tugs, emergency brakes, missing seat belts and mirrors, non-functioning alarms, unsafe forklifts, flooding in cargo facilities, inadequate PPE, insufficient heat protections, and a lack of hands-on industrial vehicle training. Workers also allege multiple injuries, including forklift strikes, falls, and a heat-related hospitalisation in summer 2024.
AGI said it had not yet received formal notification from OSHA and was therefore not in a position to respond to the allegations in detail. The company said it takes safety and regulatory matters seriously and would investigate and respond to any OSHA inquiries received. AGI also pointed to its safety management system, preventative maintenance programmes, safety committees, employee training systems, PPE provision, and OSHA recordkeeping procedures.
The allegations remain subject to review, but the case places airport cargo handling conditions under sharper attention. Air cargo operations combine warehouse activity, ramp movement, equipment handling, security procedures, airline schedules, and strict time windows. Maintenance failures, training gaps, or poor supervision can quickly disrupt both safety and service performance.
AGI provides cargo, mail, security, and ground-handling services at more than 60 airports across North America. Airlines serviced by AGI workers at JFK include Delta Air Lines, KLM, Virgin Atlantic, LATAM, and China Southern. The scale of that customer base means any regulatory scrutiny at major gateways is likely to be followed closely across the outsourced airport services market.
Air cargo handling sits at a difficult intersection of labour, equipment, and schedule pressure. A tug, forklift, belt loader, or dolly may move between warehouse areas, ramp zones, and aircraft stands, often in changing weather and under strict turnaround deadlines. Maintenance records, operator training, PPE, and incident reporting therefore form part of the service chain rather than sitting outside daily operations.
The heat-protection allegations add another layer. Airport ramps, yards, and warehouse environments can expose workers to high temperatures, especially where concrete surfaces, vehicle heat, aircraft activity, and limited shaded areas combine. Heat-risk controls are increasingly being treated as part of operational planning as weather extremes affect transport and logistics sites.
Outsourced handling models also bring governance challenges. Airlines and cargo customers depend on contractors to maintain safe, consistent, and properly staffed operations, while the contractor manages labour, equipment, training, and compliance. Weakness in any of those areas can create stoppages, investigations, injuries, reputational damage, and delays for time-sensitive freight.
Those risks are particularly acute in air cargo, where perishables, pharmaceuticals, high-value goods, e-commerce parcels, and manufacturing components all depend on predictable gateway performance. Delays at cargo sheds or ramp interfaces can disrupt downstream warehouse planning, final-mile commitments, and customer stock availability.
OSHA’s review will determine the regulatory path. The practical standards under examination are familiar across logistics operations: documented equipment checks, working emergency systems, trained operators, adequate PPE, visible escalation routes, and enough staffing to complete work safely. Where those controls are inconsistent, the operational exposure grows quickly.
The complaints also sit within a wider debate about labour conditions in logistics. High-volume warehouses, ports, parcel networks, airport cargo sheds, and ground-handling operations all face pressure to move goods faster while controlling cost. Safety systems, equipment condition, and workforce training often decide whether that pressure is absorbed cleanly or converted into operational failure.
Ground handling is sometimes treated as a support activity behind the airline brand, but it is one of the points where transport schedules, warehouse handling, labour safety, and customer service meet. The New York complaints show how visible that layer becomes when equipment, training, and working conditions are challenged.
