United Airlines Catering Kitchen Workers Vote To Unionize

DENVER, CO – Food service workers in United Airlines catering kitchens in five cities voted to join the UNITE HERE union after a five-week National Mediation Board election, the union said. About 2,700 workers in airline kitchens in Denver, Newark, NJ, Houston, Cleveland and Honolulu are affected.

About 500 of those workers are employed at Denver International Airport.

“From the beginning, we knew exactly what we wanted. We wanted a union,” said Solomon Jacklick, who has worked in the Denver kitchen for three years in a press release. “United tried everything it possibly could to tell us what we needed and didn’t need, and to discourage us from voting yes for the union. None of it worked, because we always knew that we deserved this. I’m ready to start negotiating our first contract.”

Chicago-based United said in a statement that it has a strong track record of working closely with unions.

"We value our relationships with all of our employees, including their union representatives and their collective bargaining agreements," the company said. "United is committed to treating all of our employees with dignity and respect, and the outcome of this election does not change that commitment."

Eighty percent of United’s 88,000 direct employees are unionized, the union said. Catering employees were the only "frontline" United workers without union representation. Other unionized United employees supported the catering workers’ campaign to organize, including the United flight attendants’ union AFA-CWA, United pilots’ union ALPA, Teamsters, International Association of Machinists and the AFL-CIO.

The union alleged that United orchestrated an "aggressive anti-union campaign" to discourage kitchen workers from voting to join the union. In airport kitchens, they said the company installed televisions in the kitchens to "broadcast anti-union messages," and hung “Vote No” banners.

At DIA, kitchen workers earn between $10 -$12 per hour, according to the Denver Post. Unite Here is championing Denver Airport Minimum Wage Initiative for Denver’s May 2019 election, which will address the low pay of 6,000 DIA workers who earn below $15 per hour.

UNITE HERE represents 300,000 hospitality workers in the U.S. and Canada. This includes nearly 18,000 airline catering workers employed by Flying Food Group, Gate Gourmet, LSG Sky Chefs, and United Airlines, the union said.

Image via Unite Here

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