Airline catering workers for LSG Sky Chefs at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport voted to strike if ongoing mediation talks with the company fail to produce a contract.
The company makes meals for airlines, including market-leader Delta, to serve on flights that start at the airport.
Organizers hope the threat of a strike puts pressure on Sky Chefs to raise its base wage to $15 an hour and improve health benefits. MSP is one of more than 20 airports across the country where employees of Sky Chefs and another catering firm, Gate Gourmet, are voting this week and next on strike authorization.
The two catering firms and United Airlines are negotiating independently with Unite Here, a union representing hotel, food-service, transportation and other service workers. All three talks started last year, and Sky Chefs and Gate Gourmet are now in mediation with the National Mediation Board, the federal body designed to remedy labor issues in the railroad and airline industries.
Sky Chefs, a wholly owned subsidiary of Germany's Lufthansa AG, did not return requests for comment.
Sky Chefs employs more than 450 people at MSP and they are represented by Unite Here Local 17. The authorization passed with 99.7% support during voting that lasted into the evening Thursday.
Catering workers in the union's local units in Boston, Washington, Detroit and Dallas also passed strike-authorization votes this week.
"We are definitely far apart from one another," said Christa Mello, president of Unite Here Local 17. "We've been bargaining for several months and I would anticipate several more months of bargaining. We just want fair wages."
Daremyelesh Geda works for Sky Chefs at MSP six days a week — often putting in overtime — at $12.65 an hour. She has worked there five years and enjoys the job, preparing salad trays or entrees for the company's airline customers, and it's close to her house. But, with two teenage kids, she says every month she is just squeezing by financially.
"We are working hard and we are tired. Sometimes I can't buy food," Geda said. "When the month finishes, I sometimes cannot pay my bills. It's very hard."
She doesn't use the company-provided health insurance because she said it is too expensive. Instead, she buys insurance through the Minnesota state exchange. Only 26% of workers at the MSP kitchen take the company's health care, according to the union. And even though many of them have kids, only 6% cover a child or family member with the company's insurance.
Jemal Dube, the transportation coordinator for Sky Chefs at MSP, said he uses the company's health insurance to cover himself and his four kids, which costs close to $90 a week.
"But, then anytime we take our kids to the hospital or clinic there is another bill," Dube said. "It is very expensive and it is not affordable."
Dube has worked 13 years for the company and now makes $18.35 an hour.
"I like my job. We are providing a good service to the airline and I am very happy with it," Dube said, but "negotiation is taking a long time. We are fed up with that."
If the talks fail to progress and the National Mediation Board releases them from contract talks, the union members are legally allowed to strike, which could disrupt air travel.
Unite Here represents about 11,000 Sky Chefs workers while 7,000 workers at Gate Gourmet are represented by a joint council that includes Unite Here, Teamsters and RWDSU. It's the largest strike vote to ever occur in the nation's airline-catering industry, the union said.
Sky Chefs and the union began negotiations last fall. The two sides were moved to mediation in April.
Nearly 60% of the MSP Sky Chefs workers currently make less than $15 an hour, with wages in the kitchen starting at $11.15 an hour.
The union is also aiming its message at airlines that contract with the catering firms.
"The airlines can pressure the company to give us good benefits and give us good health care," Dube said. "This has been going for several years. It is very tough on the family when you are getting paid below the wage to cover all these costs."
Kristen Leigh Painter • 612-673-4767
