Last year In January, the City of Seattle ordered the airline catering company LSG Sky Chefs to pay $335,000 in back wages and fines—the highest amount ever ordered by the city’s new Office of Labor Standards. Over the course of a years-long investigation, the city found that Sky Chefs had failed to pay the right minimum wage to workers in West Seattle who make pre-made meals for 7-Eleven stores and Alaska Airlines flights.
A new report from Unite Here, the union that represents Sky Chefs workers, suggests the unpaid wages in Seattle weren’t a one-off.
According to the new report, Sky Chefs may be failing to pay employees what they’re owed in nine cities. In five of those cities, including Seattle, workers have filed complaints or authorities have opened investigations.
Sky Chefs is a subsidiary of the German airline Lufthansa. According to Unite Here, it caters to several hubs of American Airlines, Delta, and United, serving 126 million passengers a year.
Along with Seattle, Sky Chefs faces allegations of violating labor laws in:
• San Francisco: According to Unite Here, 136 employees at San Francisco make less than the minimum wage required by the San Francisco Airport’s Quality Standards Program, which requires wages at the airport to be slightly higher than the city’s $14 minimum wage. The airport has now begun an audit of Sky Chefs’ wages dating back to last December.
• Denver: Colorado voters approved a minimum wage increase last year, bumping the wage from $8.31 to $9.30. (It will be $12 by 2020.) Two Denver International Airport Sky Chefs employees have filed complaints with the state labor department saying the company is not paying them the new minimum wage since they were hired after January 1, when the increase was supposed to take effect.
• San Diego: Like in Colorado, voters in the city of San Diego voted to raise the minimum wage last year. Unite Here says at least seven workers in Sky Chefs’ San Diego Kitchen are making less than the city’s new $11.50 wage.
• Miami: According to the union, nearly 800 workers who prepare meals for American Airlines flights at Miami International Airport are not being paid the wage required by Miami-Dade County’s living wage ordinance. While that law requires airport workers make $12.63, Unite Here says some Sky Chefs employees at the airport make as little as $8.60 an hour.
The total lost wages for workers across those four cities and Seattle total $12 million since 2014, according to the union.
“I’m frustrated that Sky Chefs is keeping all of this money that should be ours,” Sonia Toledo, a Miami Sky Chefs worker, said in a testimonial in the report. “Right now we are earning a poverty wage but living in a rich place.”
In four other cities—Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston—Unite Here claims the company is also underpaying employees. Investigations are not yet underway in those cities.
When asked for their response to Unite Here’s report, Sky Chefs offered only a generic statement to The Stranger. The company did not respond directly to the charge that it has systematically underpaid workers, saying instead that its employees are covered by contracts bargained with their union. The company also pointed out that whether its workers are covered by local wage laws depends on each local law.
Since Unite Here bargains one contract for Sky Chefs workers all over the country, it sometimes bargains for wages that are lower than local minimum wage laws in cities like Seattle or San Francisco. In the past, Sky Chefs has argued that, because employees negotiate pay through the union, they are not covered by local minimum wage laws. But workers’ advocates say that’s dubious. Seattle’s minimum wage law, for example, applies to all workers, unionized or not. That means Sky Chefs is legally required to pay Seattle workers the Seattle minimum wage, even if their union contract specifies lower wages.
Even after Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards ruled in January that Sky Chefs owed more than $300,000 in back wages and fines, the company has continued to fight it. Sky Chefs appealed the ruling to the city’s hearing examiner and is now awaiting a decision.
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