Airport Food Workers Say Plan May Cost 325 Jobs : Labor: Outgoing vendors have given layoff notices to union employees. The workers say incoming upscale firms have not been hiring them and fear that new positions will have lower wages and benefits.
The flip side to the much-acclaimed advent of upscale food boutique vendors to LAX is this: Marlene Mendoza and 324 union workers like her have gotten pink slips from the outgoing vendors.
Mendoza and more than 200 of her co-workers went to City Hall on Wednesday to put a face on their plight--that, come May 20, they will lose their jobs as cooks, food servers, bartenders and utility workers when seven new vendors, including one owned by celebrity-chef Wolfgang Puck and a Rhino Chasers micro-brewery, take over approximately 40% of the food operations at Los Angeles International Airport.
For years, Mendoza and others have worked for Host Marriott and two smaller vendors who have dominated the food and beverage concessions at the airport.
The workers say that in an apparent effort to break their union, the new vendors seem disinclined to hire them.
“We have 325 people here who are paying the price of the boutique-ing of LAX,” Jim Wood, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, told City Council members. As he spoke, the affected workers, most of them Latinos wearing “Our Jobs, Our Lives” signs on their shirts and blouses, stood solemnly behind him.
Later on the steps of City Hall, the workers cheered loudly when leaders of their union, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 814, threatened to bring airport food operations to a standstill if the workers are not rehired by the new vendors.
“Let’s make sure no food gets sold at LAX unless we’re selling it!” shouted union leader John Wilhelm.
Local 814 President Victor Valenzuela charged that the new vendors want to oust the union and pay lower wages and offer lower benefits than his members are receiving. Under the current union contract with Host, snack bar attendants make at least $6.59 an hour and food servers receive at least $4.65.
“If things are not changed, people with full-time, career jobs will be replaced by a transient, part-time, no-benefit work force,” Valenzuela wrote in a letter to the City Council.
Two weeks ago, the City Council passed a resolution urging the new vendors to “make every effort feasible and legal to continue the employment and related benefits” of the existing workers.
Airport Commission President Ted Stein said in an interview Wednesday from Washington that he intended to take “a hands-on approach in order to reach a satisfactory resolution” of the problem when he returns to Los Angeles today.
Stein said he has heard that only one of the seven vendors had responded to the urgings of both the council and the Airport Commission that they interview and give hiring priority to Host employees.
During the interview of vendors bidding for the concessions, applicants were asked to give oral assurances that they would give preference to Host employees and pay a livable wage, Stein said. It would be illegal, however, for the city to insist that the vendors recognize the existing union, he said.
Randy Brashier with CA One Services, one of the new vendors, said Wednesday that his firm has interviewed about 150 Host Marriott employees scheduled to be laid off and definitely intends to give them a top consideration for hiring. However, Brashier said CA One has “some pretty strict requirements for personal appearance and customer service” for its employees.
“CA One is offering a different kind of food service operation than that the one that’s been out there before,” said Lisa Specht, attorney for CA One. “If the Host employees are flexible and have a good attitude, we’ll take as many as we can.”
But union leaders and workers said they are worried.
“The reality is that not one person has been hired,” Wilhelm told the council members.
Tina Ruvalcaba, a bartender at the airport, said the panic among the workers about not being rehired grew after vendors began advertising in newspapers for help. “The word is that they are not going to let themselves be unionized,” Ruvalcaba said.
“Who is going to pay my rent?” asked Mendoza, a cocktail waitress, in her own emotional testimony before the council. Unless she is rehired, Mendoza warned, she would have “no choice but to be a welfare mother” after years of being a “taxpayer and a server to the traveling public.”
Under Mayor Richard Riordan’s leadership, airport officials have embarked on an ambitious plan to upgrade the often-bland food and beverage concessions and squeeze additional revenues out of the vendors.
The food and beverage plan, part of a much-talked-about effort to make the airport the world’s premier airport, calls for seven new vendors and a redesign of the airport’s aging Theme Restaurant with the help of Walt Disney Co.
The new vendors are expected to invest nearly $11 million developing their facilities, gross $34.6 million yearly and net the city $3.4 million in additional concession revenues.
The food plan is expected to be in place by early 1996. Under it, for example, McDonald’s will have five outlets and Puck, the Daily Grill and Rhino Chasers will offer their trendy fare at one outlet each.
