Makers of Airplane Food Complain Over Cuts

A Gate Gourmet truck loading a plane in Berlin. Gate Gourmet is the world's largest airline catering company.

ZAVENTEM – Employees of Gate Gourmet at Brussels Airport staged a strike from 2:00 am until 11:00 am this morning, in protest against the company's plan to dismiss workers. 

Gate Gourmet provides meals for several passenger transport companies, including Jet Airways, Thomas Cook and Thalys.

According to the ABW/FGTB union's Bert Verhoogen, dozens of militant union activists blocked access to the company.

Gate Gourmet announced recently that, due to the expiration of its contract with Jet Airways, it would begin the process of reducing its staff of 340 by around 100. To accomplish this, the company planned to dismiss 40 temporary workers in August, terminate 29 fixed contracts, and then lay off approximately 40 others after the holidays.

Unions criticized Gate Gourmet management's attitude of management for the firing of 29 workers, because it is just below the minimum threshold of layoffs that would automatically trigger a more exhaustive collective redundancy procedure.

The unions have demanded the Gate Gourmet reduce the number of redundancies, proposing instead the use of "credit-time" toward retirement at age 52, golden handshakes and  and unemployed, as well as higher redundancy payments ("golden handshakes"). The unions left the bargaining table Wednesday.

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