After nearly 30 years spent managing the Westchester County Airport’s baggage handling, Jacqueline Piper will be retiring in May, closing her company Ground Handling Inc.
Some 128 employees will be officially laid off late May when Piper’s contract with the airport ends. However, Airport Manager Peter Scherrer said it was likely the airport’s new vendor would offer many of those same workers jobs.
Scherrer said he is currently in negotiations for a new vendor, which would handle luggage as well as parking, cleaning and towing the airplanes. The airport only uses one vendor for the job.
Piper said she is not privy to the airport’s negotiations, but is “hopeful that the employees who want to remain will be able to.”
“We don”™t really know what the outcome will be, but we think it will be a positive one,” she said.
Piper said her children weren’t interested in taking over the family business. As a result, she and her husband, who also works for the company, will simply close it down. They don’t have any plans for retirement.
“It’s been a very positive experience with the airlines as well as the county,” Piper said. “We’ve been here for a lot of years. It’s time. We’ll be shutting down the company and retiring.”
