Laid off from Gate Gourmet.

What Gate Gourmet layoffs have meant for employees

Gate Gourmet put the SFO cut down to "changes in United Airlines' catering strategy," a spokesperson told SFGATE, and United had been its largest contract at the airport. The rival's hiring plans were public before the layoffs took effect. Sky Chefs said in March that it planned to hire former Gate Gourmet employees, SFGATE reported that most were expected to be rehired before any could file for unemployment in California, and an SFO spokesperson told the San Francisco Chronicle that the airport had a retention policy and expected most workers to be rehired. If your Gate Gourmet job ends because an airline took its catering elsewhere, consider applying with the caterer that won the account before your last day, since at SFO Sky Chefs made its hiring plans known ahead of the May 13 layoff date.

What carried over was negotiated, and not everyone moved. Unite Here Local 2's spokesperson told SFGATE it was "unclear how many will go to Sky Chefs and who will stay with Gate Gourmet," which still served other airlines at SFO, though an "overwhelming majority" would keep working for one or the other. Those staying were to move with Gate Gourmet to a new facility on Cowan Road in Burlingame, the Chronicle reported, and the people on the notice ran from food preparers to dish room attendants and equipment set-up workers, Teamsters as well as Unite Here members. If you're union-represented and your airline changes caterers, it may pay to stay close to your local, since at SFO the rehiring terms were announced by the union.

The 2020 cuts were Gate Gourmet's own cutback, and in Las Vegas they split along union lines. Its May letter to Nevada made layoffs permanent for staff represented by Unite Here, while a June follow-up kept the kitchen's non-union employees on furlough, not laid off, into the summer, with the kitchen still operating. The May letter blamed "unexpected suspensions of select catering services" and said Gate Gourmet couldn't give earlier notice of those layoffs because the pandemic's impacts hadn't been foreseeable. In July, with thousands of employees still out of work, Gate Gourmet restored management's full salaries, cut 20 percent in April, back to June 15, the House staff report found. Treasury had let contractors lay off workers and still collect support figured on their pre-pandemic payrolls, which the report said ran against congressional intent.

After the September 11 attacks and again in the pandemic, Gate Gourmet's cuts came as airlines served less on board. Airlines flew fewer passengers and scaled back their food offerings after the attacks, Encyclopedia.com's company history says, and the first pandemic cuts in Atlanta came as Delta cut in-flight food and beverage service to a minimum, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Those were cutbacks in the work itself, unlike the United switches, where the work was going to another caterer at the same airport, and after the 2020 cuts Gate Gourmet itself recalled about 900 workers once its federal payroll support arrived.

Gate Gourmet appears in our WARN tracker in 11 states, from a 2001 filing in Fort Worth to the 2025 one at SFO, with more of its filings in California and Georgia than in any other state. No reason for the 2021 California notices or the 2024 Missouri notice appears in EDD's report or the tracker, so neither can be called a lost account. If your kitchen was in Georgia or Illinois, Georgia unemployment and Illinois unemployment lay out what each state pays and for how long.