Culinary workers at the Orlando International Airport who prepare and deliver on-flight meals for top airlines like United and Delta are demanding their employer, LSG Sky Chef, stop removing air-conditioning systems from their delivery trucks, as Florida faces near-record breaking heat.
Workers and allies rallied outside terminals at MCO and 13 other airports across the United States on Thursday to uplift this demand, in addition to asking for more affordable healthcare and hourly pay that can actually allow them to afford Orlando’s steep cost of living. Job listings online for Sky Chef jobs at MCO include hourly wages ranging from $15 to $19 an hour. Delivery drivers, according to the listing, “must be able to work in extreme heat.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have AC in any truck,” said one worker of 17 years, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation. The worker, who delivers on-flight meals, medical supplies and other goods straight to the tarmac, is a member of UNITE HERE, a labor union that represents 10,000 Sky Chef employees at airports nationwide, including more than 400 workers at MCO.
Sky Chef doesn’t contract with the airport, but contracts with major airlines directly instead. Although airlines they work for, such as Delta, reported billions of dollars in revenue last year, Sky Chef workers say they’re not seeing this financial gain (undoubtedly benefiting their employer) help improve safety on the job.
According to the union, Sky Chef not only buys trucks for workers without functioning AC, but actually pays to disable or even remove AC from vehicles, in what the union describes as a cost-cutting measure. “LSG Sky Chefs’ decision to use trucks without air-conditioning is putting workers’ health at risk and jeopardizing airport safety,” the union wrote in a 2017 report highlighting the issue.
Although Sky Chefs’ former parent company, Lufthansa, sold Sky Chefs to a Germany-based private equity firm in 2023, workers and union staff in Orlando say the problem of no AC in trucks has stuck. In Phoenix, Arizona, a city that has a local law requiring certain heat safety protections, this has landed them in the hot seat (pun intended).
Workers are now calling on their employer — and the billion-dollar airlines they’re contracted with — to provide better safety protections against extreme heat, and to offer more competitive wages and affordable health benefits.
Workers who deliver food and supplies to aircrafts from Sky Chef’s kitchens spend up to six hours without AC, according to the 17-year employee Orlando Weekly spoke to. If they’re forced to take on mandatory overtime — if there’s bad weather grounding flights, for instance — that’s even more time they spend in what can often exceed a 100-degree heat index. “They’re trying to save money,” the worker guessed, when asked about why their employer hasn’t made AC a priority.
UNITE HERE, a union that also represents thousands of workers at Disney World, is currently in talks with Sky Chefs for a new union contract, since their current contract was last amended nearly a decade ago. The union is fighting for a contract that can deliver the same gains for workers that UNITE HERE and other unions won last year for employees of Gate Gourmet, a similar airline catering company, after threatening to strike. According to the union, the new Gate Gourmet contract provided “significant raises and better, affordable health care.”
The difference for Sky Chef workers is that the federal Biden administration had to intervene to allow for Gate Gourmet workers to strike last year, thereby granting them that leverage. Under the Railway Labor Act, airline and rail union workers must secure “release” from federal mediation through the National Mediation Board in order to lawfully strike. While the Biden administration touted itself as pro-labor, the Trump administration has been adversarial towards unions, and is less likely to allow for a release.
Yanasely Medina, a Gate Gourmet worker in Orlando represented by the Teamsters, told Orlando Weekly on the picket line Thursday that it’s important for catering workers at the airport to stick together and fight for one another, regardless of who their employer is. “We’re all family,” she said through a translator. Many of the food prep workers are immigrants, she said, and they have families to take care of.
Medina said the minimum wage for Gate Gourmet has increased from $14 an hour to $18 since their contract was approved by members in 2024. Additional raises are on the way, and she’s hoping that workers for Sky Chef can secure a strong contract, too.
“We have to support each other,” she said. Contract talks between UNITE HERE and Sky Chef are scheduled to resume next week in Baltimore.
