At 5 Philadelphia airport restaurants, employees want to unionize and get health insurance
Unite Here Local 274 would represent staff at Bud and Marilyn’s, Sabrina’s Cafe, Chick-fil-A, Insomnia Cookies, and Good Luck Bar & Restaurant.
Martina Lyons, 59, loves her job at Bud & Marilyn’s in the Philadelphia International Airport, but she misses having employer-funded healthcare.
For 20 years, she worked at PHL’s Sky Asian Bistro, where staff was represented by a union and she had a pension. When the bistro shut down around three years ago, she became a bartender at Bud & Marilyn’s in Terminal C. She started paying for her own health insurance, until her premium nearly doubled this year and she couldn’t afford it anymore.
Lyons is one of the 160 workers at PHL’s outposts of Bud and Marilyn’s, Sabrina’s Cafe, Chick-fil-A, Insomnia Cookies, and Good Luck Bar & Restaurant. Many of them have signed onto an effort to unionize and get better benefits.
“I just always get so worried. God forbid, I have an accident…an emergency. It’s pretty scary to not have healthcare right now,” Lyons said.
On Monday, the group of cooks, dishwashers, cashiers, servers, and bartenders asked management to voluntarily recognize their affiliation with Unite Here Local 274.
Restaurateur Hakan Ilhan operates the five eateries. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Unite Here Local 274 already represents 1,200 other food-service workers at PHL, as well as hundreds of employees of Philadelphia hotels.
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According to the union, a super majority of the 160 potential new union members have signed cards to join.
What are the PHL restaurant workers seeking?
If the employer does not recognize the union voluntarily, the next step would be a union election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board.
Health insurance has already emerged as a top priority among the group. Other unionized airport workers have employer-provided health insurance, said Rosslyn Wuchinich, president of Unite Here Local 274.
“We’ve made a lot of improvements over the years to the point where most of the union workers at the airport have free healthcare,” she said.
Shymeik Ramsey, a busboy at Sabrina’s Cafe in Terminal C, hopes a union can bring clearer rules so that workers have an “understanding on what you can and can’t do instead of coming in every week to new rules.”
He also wants set work schedules, with more advance notice. Shanah Moment, a server at Sabrina’s, said worker input on schedules is important too.
“We don’t have a set schedule so our days literally change like every week,” said Moment. “Even if we post our availability in our scheduling app, sometimes we don’t always get the days that we need off and we’re still scheduled outside of our availability.”
Moment also wants job security. She gave birth in April, and was unsure t she would still have a position at Sabrina’s when she was able to work again, she said.
Overall, says Wuchinich, “the biggest issue for workers in organizing always is just having real respect and voice at work.”
PHL’s concessions workers were 100% unionized into the early 1990s, according to Wuchinich. Aramark operated those businesses at the time, she said.
Then the city brought in more food and beverage operators, she said, which meant some non-union employers came in. Around that time Unite Here began to organize at the airport. Today, some 1,200 PHL concessions and catering workers are members of Unite Here Local 274.
The airport, meanwhile, has suffered from a poor reputation broadly, landing at the bottom of a national customer satisfaction survey for five years in a row. But food, beverage and retail options were a bright spot, according to the most recent report.
This is a developing story.
