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Gate Gourmet workers are fighting together across the miles, says Blake Harwell

The fight between airline caterer Gate Gourmet at London Heathrow Airport and the Transport and General Workers Union captivated media attention in Europe as American venture capitalism showed its teeth.

What may be less known is that Unite Here and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have been negotiating on behalf of 6,000 American Gate Gourmet workers for nearly two years. All three unions have been engaged in a collaborative effort to defeat Gate Gourmet’s cowboy brand of union busting.

Throughout negotiations on both sides of the Atlantic, unions have coordinated their bargaining efforts. We shared critical financial information about Gate Gourmet and its owner, leveraged buyout specialist Texas Pacific Group. In addition, we held concurrent actions at corporate offices in London and New York, exchanged worker-to-worker letters and wore stickers with a unified motto: “More work, less pay, no way!”

Global union coordination was evident when Gate Gourmet sacked 670 Heathrow workers in a calculated effort to break their union. Gate Gourmet failed to predict how outraged American workers would be and how global the union response would be.

The joint efforts culminated in a tour of sacked UK workers through key American operations of Gate Gourmet. Two Heathrow Gate Gourmet workers accompanied TGWU representative Patrick O’Keeffe in rallies with their American counterparts in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles in their struggling airline industry, Gate Gourmet workers in the UK have been strengthened in their fight by knowing that fight is being waged by union workers in overseas kitchens as well.

Blake Harwell is a senior research analyst for Unite Here, USA.