Miami cargo workers allege wage theft as Florida bans local living wages

By Zendoric · October 6, 2026.

At the busiest cargo airport in the United States, three current and former AGI Cargo employees filed wage theft complaints with Miami-Dade County on October 3, according to documents reviewed by Axios. The claims total some $13,200 in unpaid wages. The union 32BJ SEIU, which puts the number of AGI workers at Miami International Airport (MIA) at around 900, maintains that the company forces part of its workforce to remain available between flights without pay and calculates overtime at a lower rate than it should.

Carlos Builes, a ramp agent who loads and unloads cargo —from pharmaceuticals to seafood— is claiming $3,033 in unpaid wages according to his complaint. At Monday's protest he described sleepless nights not knowing whether he would be called in to work, overdue bills, unpaid property taxes and the need to donate plasma to make ends meet.

AGI rejects the accusations. Sarah Andrews, a company representative, told Axios that "employees are paid for all time worked" and that any suggestion to the contrary "is without merit". According to Andrews, overtime is paid at one and a half times the regular rate after 40 hours a week, and the so-called "split shifts" reflect the fact that air cargo is more unpredictable than passenger flights: employees receive weekly schedules based on expected activity, adjusted when arrival times change. It is worth stressing: these are administrative complaints that have been filed, not a final ruling, and for now we only have two conflicting accounts.

The regulatory backdrop weighs as heavily as the individual case. Miami-Dade requires companies contracted by the county to pay $22.53 an hour without health insurance or $18.40 with it, according to the Miami Herald. But a Florida state law prohibits local governments, for agreements signed on or after September 30, 2026, from imposing on airport contractors wages above the state minimum of $15 an hour. The wage floor that protects MIA workers today has, literally, an expiration date for upcoming contracts. Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava joined Monday's protest: "They deserve a decent life and a decent wage," she said.

MIA is no ordinary airport: it generates $212 billion in economic activity for Florida and is the busiest cargo airport in the country, moving goods ranging from pharmaceuticals to seafood. That economic centrality contrasts with the precariousness described by those who physically keep it running, shift after shift.

Our reading. Disputes like this one —unpredictable shifts, unpaid availability, contested overtime calculations— are the symptom of a logistics sector that still depends on human hands for tasks whose scheduling is already managed by optimization software: which shift covers which flight, how many standby hours are needed, where to cut. Broadly, air and port logistics have spent years incorporating AI-driven scheduling systems to match staffing to demand in real time; that same efficiency, in the hands of an unscrupulous employer, can become the perfect tool for demanding total availability without paying for it. There is no indication in this particular case that AGI uses such systems —the company speaks of weekly schedules set in advance— but the underlying tension is the same one we will see grow across the logistics chain as AI takes on more scheduling and workforce optimization: who captures the gain from that efficiency, the company or the worker, is a question that will come up more often, not less.

The state law adds a political layer to the problem. Barring counties from requiring decent wages in exchange for public contracts is, in practice, a bet that the price of essential work in critical infrastructure will be set by the market and not by local bargaining. It is exactly the kind of decision that, in the transition toward a more automated economy, will determine whether workers squeezed by logistics restructuring come out the other side with some cushion or with none at all. Our underlying thesis —that AI can bring abundance in the long run if the short-term transition is managed sensibly— depends precisely on this kind of regulatory guardrail not being dismantled just when it is most needed. The AGI Cargo case is not a local footnote: it is a thermometer of how we treat human labor today while we decide how much of it deserves protecting tomorrow.