A series of contentious events, including a strike and ongoing disputes with the UNITE HERE union, have fueled an employee-led drive to decertify the union shop status of Flying Food Group’s Inglewood, CA facility. If successful, the effort would represent one of the few times union members voted to dissolve their own union.
Flying Food Group (FFG), founded in 1983, specializes in preparing meals for airlines. It employs 500 people at its Inglewood facility.
According to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) website, under certain circumstances an organization can initiate a process known as "decertification" to remove its current union or replace it with an alternative one.
To initiate this process, a minimum of 30% of colleagues must sign cards or a petition, requesting the NLRB to organize an election. If the majority of the votes cast in the election do not support union representation, the existing union will lose its certification.
In August, FFG employees filed a decertification petition in which they asked the NLRB to hold an election to gauge if UNITE HERE Local 11 Union still holds the support of the majority of the company’s employees. At the time, UNITE HERE was pushing the City Council to revoke FFG’s license to operate which would have forced FFG to leave Los Angeles, risking hundreds of union jobs in the process.
John Eagan, FFG's Associate General Counsel, said an April strike suggested a lack of union support as a significant portion of employees continued working.
“This was not a strike that seemed to be supported by the members of the union,” Eagan told Coachella Valley Times.
“We've been in contentious negotiations with the union since last summer. There was a strike at our facility in April, and we had – depending on the day – always over 50% of the people crossing the picket line coming to work, at times, it could be up to 70%.
Following the strike, Eagan said the union escalated its efforts by approaching the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles Airport Board, aiming to revoke Flying Food Group's license to operate at the airport, which could potentially cripple their operations.
“If we don't have a license, we can't access the airfield and we can’t cater airplanes,” Eagan said. “As you could imagine, that would be a really big problem for us. We really wouldn't have any customers at that point.”
According to the publicly filed documents, a hearing was scheduled for Sept. 14. This hearing would have set the date, time and manner of the election. However, UNITE HERE raised a number of allegations to delay this hearing, causing the NLRB to postpone it indefinitely.
“We want to hold it as soon as possible,” Eagan said of the election.
“We offered a date to hold the election at our facility to make it convenient. In 90 plus percent of the cases where an election is held, it's normally held at the employer site because it's just the most convenient place to have that option.”
Both the employee who filed the petition and FFG proposed scheduling the election for Sept. 20 and to hold it at FFG’s facility. However, UNITE HERE proposed delaying the election, or not having it at all, and also proposed holding the election off-site.
“About a week later the union filed several documents trying to stop the election from ever taking place,” Eagan said. “Also, if the board wouldn't stop the election from taking place, delaying it as long as possible, and then trying to hold the election at a church somewhere offsite, which would obviously make it harder for employees to vote in that election.”
The Union’s position statement maintains that the proposed petition from FFG is inappropriate due to various issues with the employer's conduct, and there being several obstacles to conducting a fair election, including unfair labor practices and the need for a neutral site and multilingual materials.
Given that the election rests on a simple majority of those present, holding the election offsite could potentially be a problem for democratic efforts regarding representation.
“So if 10 people vote and six vote for the union, the union stays for almost 500 people,” Eagan said.
Eagan noted employees have specifically complained about the behavior displayed by the union leadership.
“There's also a lot of allegations of harassment and stuff going on. The union reps are in the facility all the time. Employees didn't like it. They were very, very aggressive with this,” Eagan said.
The company has taken measures to address these issues.
Despite their efforts to foster a fair work environment, Eagan emphasized the company's commitment to ensuring that employees do not bear the consequences of union disputes, as they have faced challenges in negotiating a new contract.
“We don't want to be in a position where our employees are bearing the brunt of bad conduct. (UNITE HERE) won't enter into a new contract with us. We've done a couple of wage increases, with an agreement with the union so our employees aren't hurt by the fact that UNITE HERE won’t come to the bargaining table with us,” Eagan said.