On Jan. 30, unionized airport police officers and firefighters at Rhode Island’s T.F. Green International Airport unanimously voted “no confidence” in Rhode Island Airport Corporation leadership, including RIAC President and CEO Iftikhar Ahmad.
The vote comes during months-long contract negotiations between RIAC and the leaders of RI Council 94 for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO and Local 2873, which consists of around 100 union workers. The union’s last contract expired in June 2024.
Workers have cited concerns about poor management and increased staff turnover under Ahmad, who has led RIAC, the quasi-public agency that manages the state’s aviation and airports, since 2016.
“We’ve gone through four police chiefs under Mr. Ahmad’s tenure,” said Steve Parent, former T.F. Green fire lieutenant who is also the union’s current president, in an interview with The Herald. “Now we’re starting to see more of a turnover of union staff working under his leadership style.”
Parent — who worked for RIAC for over 10 years — was fired by the corporation in October. According to him, RIAC’s reasoning for firing him was that he had called prospective applicants for the airport and told them not to apply to the corporation’s jobs. Parent denies ever doing so.
“There was no conversation about it at all,” Parent added.
Two days before the vote, Joseph Perkins, RIAC’s head of security, suddenly resigned after four months on the job, citing concerns with leadership.
In addition to the vote, union leaders filed a grievance with the State Labor Relations Board to ensure that RIAC maintains all 27 police department positions at T.F. Green.
When Perkins left his job, he sent out a statement to his colleagues claiming that RIAC had plans to add private security officers to the police department, Parent said.
“Unfortunately everything you suspect about RIAC management is true,” wrote Perkins in his statement to colleagues, WPRI reported. In addition, he claimed that the corporation aimed to dispose of the police department and “most of all the union.”
Parent argued that private security officers are usually “limited in any experience” and do not “understand how the police service works,” potentially leading to skill discrepancies across the department.
But Bill Fischer, RIAC’s spokesperson, wrote to The Herald that the corporation disagrees with the union’s current assessment of officers on the job and Perkins’s allegations.
“In 2018, we had 27 police officers, and today we have the same 27 positions, of which six are vacant,” he wrote, denying any allegations of staff shortages.
In regards to “any and all allegations” Perkins has made about the privatization of the police force or otherwise, “we have no idea what he’s talking about,” Fischer wrote to The Herald.
Fischer claimed that Perkins himself suggested downsizing the RIAC police department, an idea that is “difficult to reconcile” given “his false accusations that we intended to eliminate the department.”
“Most of my officers were comfortable with Chief Perkins, he was a tenured officer who understood their issues, and was willing to stand behind his officers,” Parent said, adding that Perkins’s resignation came as a surprise to most staff.
Now, Parent says, the union is focused on negotiating a new contract.
Parent expressed that the union would have liked to start negotiations with the corporation last January, but both groups did not discuss the contract until last June, when it was already set to expire.
Fischer told The Herald that both parties agreed to enter into mediation in early February. “Hopefully, this will create a pathway to resolve our differences and finalize a contract,” he added.
“We don't want to hurt the airport's image,” Parent said. “We should all be in this with the same goal.”
Sanai Rashid lives in Long Island, New York. As an English and Economics concentrator, she is passionate about storytelling and how numbers and data create narratives in ways words alone cannot. When she is not writing, you can find her trying new pizza places in Providence or buying another whale stuffed animal.
