Phoenix Airport Concession Workers Vote To Strike

Concession workers in Sky Harbor, Phoenix’s sprawling airport, voted on striking later this year against HMS Host, the large company responsible for operating the main food and drink outlets at the airport, Sasha Abramsky reported for Nation magazine.

Photo Insert: Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

For the past four years, UNITE Here! Local 11 has worked to secure a decent contract for servers, bartenders, baristas, dishwashers, and cooks in the airport. Over that same period, HMS Host, the largest airport concessionaire in the country, has, the union argues, consistently failed to come up with decent contract provisions.

Longtime workers, even the hundred or so who stuck by their posts during the darkest days of the pandemic in 2020, haven’t seen a pay increase since 2017; they aren’t provided pensions, have extremely limited vacation time.

Worse, Abramsky revealed, they have had to pay more for their health insurance since 2019 —and have been bumped onto a substandard plan that, workers say, often denies them coverage for necessary medications and treatments.“I’ve been with this company 17 years,” says 42-year-old Lucia Salinas, a cook at the Cowboy Ciao restaurant.

“And we’ve been fighting for a few years for affordable health care and more wages.”

A spokesperson for HMS Host disputes the union’s claims, arguing that they have proposed a 12 percent wage increase during contract negotiations, a healthcare plan toward which workers would have to contribute as little as $55 per month, and a 401k retirement plan that, the company claims, offers better end-of-career remuneration than does the union proposal.

They also point to the fact they offered $800 bonuses to airport employees in September of this year.

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