More than 850 unionized workers at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport could find out June 9 how likely they are to keep their jobs ? and whether those jobs still will provide union wages and benefits.

That?s when staff at the Metropolitan Airports Commission announces recommendations on who should receive leases to operate more than 98,000 square feet of restaurants, stores and concessions in the airport?s concourses. The full commission is expected to award the leases June 21.

Currently, a single company ? HMS Host ? operates most retail space at the airport. Host has well-established contracts with Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 17 for bars and restaurants, and with the Teamsters for retail shops.

But last September, MAC created new policies that pave the way for airport retail space to operate more like a shopping mall, in which concessions either are carved up among several companies, or awarded to a single developer who sublets space to dozens of individual tenants.

In either case, the new policies make it easier to bust the unions, dismiss employees, and reduce compensation, Local 17 says. MAC?s new policies do nothing to guarantee that current workers will get jobs with new vendors, that new vendors will pay living wages, or that new vendors will allow workers to exercise their rights join a union.

MAC has divided airport concessions into 16 batches ? 7 of them food and beverage, the rest retail, said Blake Harwell, a researcher with Local 17. Local 17 knows that Host is bidding on 6 of the 7 food batches, Harwell says, and knows who the competing bidders are. But Local 17 is unable to obtain details of the bids to evaluate them or the wages they propose to pay.

?Our understanding is that the public doesn?t get any access until they actually decide to let the contract,? he said.

Adapted from The Union Advocate, the official newspaper of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@mtn.org