{"id":382322,"date":"2026-07-01T17:22:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T17:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/382322\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T17:22:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T17:22:12","slug":"oakland-airport-skycap-says-workplace-injury-left-her-homeless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/382322\/","title":{"rendered":"Oakland Airport Skycap Says Workplace Injury Left Her Homeless"},"content":{"rendered":"

California\u2019s workers\u2019 compensation system is intended to ensure employees injured on the job quickly receive medical care while claims are investigated. Benefits may also include partial wage replacement during recovery. But interviews with Vernon, several co-workers and a former supervisor suggest those protections may have broken down in her case, illustrating how workers can fall through the system\u2019s cracks with devastating financial and medical consequences.<\/p>\n

Vernon lost her housing, car and life\u2019s savings after 22 years of working for airline services contractors at the Oakland airport, she said, including five years as a Prospect employee.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfair. I needed a lot of help throughout the process, and I felt like they failed me. I didn\u2019t know where to begin as far as medical coverage, how to seek any type of support,\u201d Vernon said. \u201cI hit rock bottom. I became homeless because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Keiana Vernon holds a photo of herself at work at Oakland San Francisco Bay Airport on her phone outside Fairmont Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in San Leandro on June 11, 2026. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

Most California employers are responsible for arranging prompt medical attention for a work-related injury. State law also required the company to give Vernon a workers\u2019 compensation claim form within a day and report the incident to its insurance company within five days, both critical steps to beginning the benefits process. None of that happened, according to Vernon and a former supervisor.<\/p>\n

Instead, Vernon said her manager, Salesh Prasad, told her to go home shortly after her fall. He directed a co-worker to drive her to the airport employee parking lot, where she was left alone in her car, with no clear guidance about medical care. She tried contacting Prasad in the days that followed, but he became unresponsive, she said, finally asking her to turn in her security badge.<\/p>\n

Attempts to reach Prospect Airport Services were unsuccessful. Unifi Aviation, which owns Prospect, declined several requests for comment. Unifi, North America\u2019s largest provider of aviation services, operates at more than 240 airports. The Atlanta-based company<\/a>, which generates about $2 billion in revenue, is a subsidiary of the privately held Argenbright Holdings, its majority owner, and Delta Air Lines.<\/p>\n

Southwest Airlines, which contracts with Prospect at OAK, deferred questions to the company.<\/p>\n

According to labor experts, the chain of contractors servicing airlines incentivizes cost-cutting, leaving low-wage workers who push passengers in wheelchairs, clean airplane cabins and handle baggage with eroded benefits and job conditions, particularly if they are not unionized, as is the case with Prospect\u2019s Oakland baggage handlers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear whether the company\u2019s alleged failure to respond to Vernon\u2019s injury as required by law was an isolated incident or part of a broader pattern.<\/p>\n

Failures to follow workers\u2019 compensation laws are often the result of employers not properly training or overseeing their managers, said Jason Marcus, former president of the California Applicants\u2019 Attorneys Association, whose members represent injured workers in the workers\u2019 compensation system.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve certainly seen my fair share of what we kind of refer to as horror stories,\u201d said Marcus, who has nearly two decades of experience. \u201cSomebody gets hurt, suffers a serious injury, and is kind of left to their own devices without any real help or guidance from their employer. And that\u2019s just not how it\u2019s supposed to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time Nicole Owens visited Vernon at her home in March, she was dismayed to find her long-time friend mostly immobile, in pain and depressed. The last time the pair \u2014 who refer to each other as sisters \u2014 had seen each other was in September 2024, when they\u2019d danced together at the Oakland Arena during an Usher show, Vernon\u2019s favorite performer, Owens said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very shocking, I\u2019ll be honest with you, because I\u2019m used to my sister working two jobs and being very mobile, full of life, always moving around,\u201d said Owens, 48, a program manager at PG&E. \u201cSo to see her in this state, it was just very disheartening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owens said that, after calling Prospect three times without receiving a response, she helped Vernon, who is estranged from relatives, find medical help. Doctors at Alameda Health System have since diagnosed Vernon with a nerve disorder, chronic bilateral low back pain and right-sided sciatica. At the Fairmont Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, where Vernon has lived for about a year, she continues to take cortisone shots to manage her pain. She remains unable to walk without fearing she will fall.<\/p>\n

A Prospect supervisor who was not present at the airport the morning of Vernon\u2019s accident but later checked on her case in the company\u2019s computer system, said he found no evidence of an on-the-job injury report, a medical filing, an insurance claim or other paperwork indicating that proper procedures were followed.<\/p>\n

\"\"A sign for the Oakland International Airport hangs above a BART station at the airport in Oakland on April 12, 2024. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a complete negligence on the part of the company,\u201d said Alan Norris, a Prospect training supervisor who said he helped Vernon file a formal complaint with Cal\/OSHA, which is investigating. \u201cShe should have had a good outcome, at least a reasonable outcome. \u2018Hey, she got injured, OK, let\u2019s get you the help.\u2019 But no, she was completely ignored, thrown under the bus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Norris was fired earlier this year. He believes he was retaliated against for reporting what he described as a \u201ctoxic work environment\u201d to Prospect\u2019s human resources department and Southwest. According to Norris, Vernon and a current employee who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, some Prospect managers allowed favoritism, harassment and other problems to fester at OAK while the company failed to address conduct they described as illegal or incompetent.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Prospect agreed to a confidential settlement to resolve a lawsuit by a female dispatcher at the airport who alleged she was wrongly terminated after managers, including Prasad, failed to prevent a supervisor\u2019s sexual harassment, which she claimed began weeks after she was hired, according to KQED\u2019s review of public records.<\/p>\n

Prasad stopped working for Prospect in February, according to his LinkedIn profile. Reached by phone, Prasad confirmed he was no longer working for the company and declined to answer questions about Vernon. \u201cBetter contact the company,\u201d he said before hanging up.<\/p>\n

\"\"Keiana Vernon (center) talks with fellow residents who have become friends outside Fairmont Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in San Leandro on June 11, 2026. Vernon suffered a workplace injury while working for an airport services contractor and is now living at the long-term care facility after developing chronic injuries and mobility limitations. (Beth LaBerge\/KQED)<\/p>\n

In April, Vernon and other airline service contractors at the Oakland airport spoke about safety hazards and other alleged labor law violations before the Port of Oakland Board of Commissioners, which oversees the airport. Accompanying the workers were organizers with SEIU-USWW, calling on the Port to adopt policies that the union said would incentivize regulatory compliance by contractors, which operate under agreements with the airlines \u2014 not the airport.<\/p>\n

The union said the Port is considering a measure that would affirm workers\u2019 rights to unionize without retaliation, similar to one already in place at the San Francisco International Airport.<\/p>\n

The Port requires all contractors and employers operating at the airport to comply with applicable federal, state and local labor laws, but it\u2019s up to separate enforcement agencies to investigate any alleged violations, said Justin Berton, communications director for the Port. The Port, however, is reviewing its tenant labor standards and discussing the airport contractor concerns raised by workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re taking these issues very, very seriously,\u201d Andreas Cluver, president of the Oakland Board of Port Commissioners, told workers during the April 9 meeting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California\u2019s workers\u2019 compensation system is intended to ensure employees injured on the job quickly receive medical care while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-382322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}