LOS ANGELES - Union members seeking a new contract with the city of Los Angeles demonstrated outside a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport this evening as thousands of holiday travelers returned home.

As of 5:30 p.m., about 90 members of the Engineers and Architects Association were marching outside the lower arrival level at Terminal 1, which is the busiest terminal, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Castles.

"What the protesters are doing, they are crossing the street with the green light, facilitated by airport police officers," she said.

Holding signs reading "equal pay for equal work," the protesters were crossing at three crosswalks, she said.

About 700 members of the union — including communications and computer technicians and runway supervisors — work at LAX. Union members have been without a contract for almost 17 months.

The 8,000-member union reportedly wants raises equal to those given by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18 in September.

Those raises — at least 17.9 percent over five years and possibly as much as 31 percent, depending on cost-of-living adjustments — have spurred other city unions to seek the same deal.

The union has not announced any job actions, but its members reportedly voted last Sunday to authorize a strike.

The protest was scheduled for the same time when thousands of travelers were returning from their Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

"It's very possible that many of them will become frustrated at this, and they need to understand that this has been caused by the CAO of this city and the people that run this city, because they have had over a year and a half to solve this problem," Robert Aquino of EAA told reporters at the airport.

When asked if the union wanted to inconvenience travelers, he responded, "what we're willing to do is to make our message known to everybody in this city."

"The city is treating us like second-class citizens, and basically we're tired of it and we figured that this way the public will see how we feel," added Angel Calvo of the EAA.

Union officials said they had no intention of disrupting airport operations, and Castles said no union members had walked off their jobs at LAX.

About 59 airport police were monitoring the protest, said airport police Sgt. Louis Hoffman.

There have been no arrests, Castles said.

"What we are trying to do here at the airport is to ensure that their constitutional rights are protected while at the same time we are trying to balance the needs of the public in terms of maintaining public safety," Castles told CBS2.

About 200,000 passengers were expected to pass through the airport today.

Castles said the airport was busy, but traffic was not being disrupted by the demonstrators.