S. LSG Sky Chefs Workers Ratify Best Contract in More Than 15 Years

Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees (HERE) International Union. December 4, 2003.

After more than three years of negotiations, LSG Sky Chefs workers in the United States, represented by the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE), won their best contract in more than 15 years. Over 40 HERE locals participated in the struggle and were supported by European LSG Sky Chefs unions, the Geneva-based International Union of Food Workers (IUF), and the International Transport Workers Union (ITF), headquartered in London.

Making health care more affordable was the workers' top priority in negotiations. LSG workers achieved significant reductions in employee contributions and convinced the company to absorb all health care cost increases the first year, and almost all increases the second and third year. By the end of the three-year contract, employee monthly contributions for family coverage will have decreased 47% from today's cost, and 77% from what employees would have paid under the old contract based on predicted health care cost increases. The health care package will also include a new free vision plan and prescription drug cost reductions.

Other major contract improvements include protection from subcontracting, protection from management doing bargaining unit work, a better grievance procedure, and protections for immigrant workers. Given that an estimated 70% of the approximately 7,500 Sky Chefs workers are immigrants, winning protections for these members was particularly significant. Wages are negotiated locally and were not part of these national negotiations.

"LSG workers won their first non-concessionary contract since 1985 because they were willing to take action and hold out for what they knew they deserved," said HERE Secretary-Treasurer Sherri Chiesa, also the chief negotiator for the latest LSG contract.

LSG Sky Chefs workers ratified the new contract by a vote of 3568 to 155.

© 2002 Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees (HERE) International Union. All rights reserved.

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