Labor & Employment Law

Sky Chefs Workers Rally for Better Contract

By James Parks

Sky Chefs workers want action on a fair contract that addresses concessions they made four years ago.

Four years ago, employees at LSG Sky Chefs, the world?s largest airline catering company, took wage cuts and agreed to pay more for health care coverage to help the company survive. Now the company is profitable again, but management is refusing to restore the workers’ previous wages and benefits. Instead, the company is trying to wring more out of workers demanding, among other things, that they accept a health care plan with greatly increased premiums.

Fed up with a lack of progress in contract talks that began a year ago, workers from LSG kitchens across the country, all members of UNITEHERE!, gathered in Minnesota?s Twin Cities late last month to rally and call on the company to stop dragging its feet and negotiate in good faith.

The workers are united in their call for LSG to negotiate a national contract, but LSG insists on negotiating separate contracts at each of its 47 U.S. locations.

?These workers gave wages up, they took health care increases, they received a contract that was worse than what they had a decade ago,? said Martin Goff, vice president of Twin Cities-based UNITEHERE! Local 17.

But it was all done with the idea of keeping their jobs and their company afloat?and with the promise that they would be appreciated later on when the company started to do better. Sky Chefs is now doing better, but they seem to have forgotten the sacrifice that the people who work for them made.

Workers like T. Turner of Philadelphia, who relies on welfare programs such as food and medical assistance to make ends meet. He told the rally:

We work for a multibillion-dollar company, and there?s no way any of their employees should have to rely on welfare or public assistance to get by. I would like to see us get a fair contract at the end of the day so that I can get off of public assistance and be able to afford medical coverage through my job.

In fact, LSG Sky Chefs’  parent, German-based LSG Lufthansa Service Holding AG, raked in revenues of 2.1 billion Euros in 2009, or about $2.78 billion in dollars, according to its website.

John Munsen, an equipment-sanitation coordinator in the Twin Cities, sums up the workers? feelings this way:

Our members are unified from New York to L.A. and all points in between. It?s an awesome movement we?ve got here. All of the disrespect and bad-faith bargaining Sky Chefs has shown us thus far has only unified us and made us stronger. Together, we are committed to fighting one day longer than the company.

Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum, both Minnesota Democrats, joined the rally and signed a petition in support of the workers.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on November 02, 2010 (boomark / email).