I believe that the root cause of this problem described in my outline is discrimination. Thus, I have of filed a discrimination complaint with the EEOC and the Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Neither the EEOC nor the DFEH found evidence of discrimination, but they gave me the right to sue. Designated smoking areas include glass enclosures near the United Airlines boarding areas and anywhere outdoors. Since then, the San Francisco Airport smoking ban has created a defacto dumping ground for smokers at the curbside check-in work areas.
Smokers continue to converge in droves, and at times engulfing our podiums with cigarette smoke.
Consequently, this marked the outset of the depreciation of our working conditions due to secondhand smoke exposure. Although SFIA management was cooperative in the beginning, by being responsive to our requests for signs directing smokers away from our work areas, skycaps reached an impasse with Airport management about two years ago. And he offered none of his own recommendations to remedy the problem by directing smokers to areas unoccupied by skycap podiums. Unlike the exposure to secondhand smoke that the mostly black skycaps experience at the curbside work area, United does a stellar job of protecting its employees from secondhand smoke. At an area near the United Cargo building in San Francisco, there is a designated smoking area with a glass enclosure, ashtrays, seats and even a public phone.