Inflight catering, that's a different ball game

Inflight catering is a distinct 'branch of sport' within the catering world. If you work in the inflight sector, you will certainly recognise this. In the inflight sector, employees, for example, do not have to deal with constantly changing employers during contract changes, work at one or two locations around the airport, and remain with the same employer for a long time. There are also separate arrangements in the CLA contract catering for inflight catering, such as higher salary scales, extra allowances for working night shifts, and a year-end bonus.

The competition between airline caterers is enormous, and the influence of airlines on these caterers is significant. This increases the workload, and a large part of the organisation and execution of the work is determined by the timely delivery of meals. Working in inflight catering means dealing with the tight schedule of departing and arriving aircraft.

FNV Catering has a group of active members at the largest inflight catering companies at Schiphol, with whom I regularly speak. Topics that often come up are workload and working conditions. What strikes me is that the airlines for which the caterers work have been achieving good results again in recent years, but employees in inflight catering do not sufficiently benefit from this.

The future of this sector is certainly a point of attention for us as a union, with issues such as robotisation, workplace safety, and workload being important. We must not forget the role of budget airlines. The question of whether meals will still be included with a plane ticket in the future, or whether passengers will have to pay separately, will also influence the service and revenue of inflight catering companies. On many European flights, meals are no longer included, and the trend is that there will be less demand for this in the future.

The pressure experienced by employees at inflight caterers and the (low) rewards compared to other industries is not only a concern for unions in the Netherlands. It is a worldwide issue where the role of major airlines is decisive. Last year, I attended an international union conference in America. It became clear here that employees in the sector worldwide face the same problems, such as low wages, high workload, poor or outdated equipment to work with, and insufficient protection when working in (extreme) weather conditions.

Agreements have been made between the unions for catering employees, such as FNV Catering, and the unions with members at the airlines to jointly tackle the existing problems for inflight catering employees. It was also agreed during the last CLA negotiations to have regular consultations with employers about improving the working conditions for employees in the inflight sector. We will also work to make employees in the inflight catering sector members of the union, so we can achieve a strong negotiating position in the upcoming CLA discussions. Are you joining us?

Harry de Wit, sector and regional union representative North-East