PHL Airport fast-food workers rally for ability to unionize

For more than a year now, workers of the Au Bon Pain at the Philadelphia International Airport have been asking to unionize, something the workers say the fast-casual café chain has so far denied.

Workers on Thursday protested at Terminal C at the Philadelphia International Airport to call for the process allowing them to formally decide to unionize.

  

Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown introduced a bill in October calling on Au Bon Pain to resolve its labor dispute "quickly and peacefully" with the PHL Airport workers.

"Even though City Council has urged them to resolve this quickly, they’ve refused to do so," Unite Here spokesman Diego Parra said.

Au Bon Pain, however, said it has met with Unite Here.

"The union wishes for Au Bon Pain to recognize it without giving employees an opportunity to participate in a secret ballot election as the law provides," Chief Brand Officer Maria Feicht said. "Unite Here's tactics have included attempts to pressure and harass team members who are not interested in Unite Here."

Feicht said the café chain is committed to ensuring its workers "enjoy the full protection of the National Labor Relations Act, which fundamentally includes choosing for themselves if they want a union and not letting Unite Here make that choice for them."

Through unionizing, workers may be able to receive better wages and benefits, something workers at the Au Bon Pain "can't even think of ... because they don't even have the right to decide if they want to unionize," Parra said.

He said the workers get paid less than $10 an hour on average now, although an agreement the city reached with the airport earlier this year mandated all airline subcontractors to pay $12 per hour.

In October, fast food workers employed by PCE approved their first union contract by a majority vote, ensuring workers would get raises over the next two-and-a-half years, doubling their take-home pay, according to Unite Here.

The new contract covers employees of Wendy's, Villa Pizza, Earl of Sandwich, among others, Parra said.

Other airport workers demonstrated last month to draw attention to different subcontractors, who they say were also preventing unionization and failing to pay the mandated minimum wage.

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal