PRESS RELEASE: As L.A. City Investigation Continues, Serial Lawbreaker Flying Food Group Quietly Moves to Repay Dozens of Workers It Failed to Provide Required Healthcare Benefits in Apparent Violation of LAX Living Wage Law
LOS ANGELES — As the City of Los Angeles continues investigating Flying Food Group for alleged violations of the LAX Living Wage Ordinance, the airline caterer has begun quietly paying dozens of workers after city investigators uncovered an additional apparent violation involving required healthcare benefits.
In March of this year, workers filed a complaint with the City of Los Angeles alleging that Flying Food Group’s newly implemented healthcare plan failed to satisfy the LAX Living Wage Ordinance’s healthcare benefit requirement, which currently requires employers to provide qualifying health benefits valued at $7.65 per hour or pay the equivalent amount in additional wages. Workers contend the company’s health plan is worth less than the required amount, leaving nearly all 800 workers underpaid. That investigation remains ongoing.
During the course of the investigation, however, the City’s Bureau of Contract Administration (BCA) uncovered a separate violation. Investigators found that Flying Food Group failed to provide any healthcare credit at all to some workers, resulting in an underpayment of $7.65 per hour for every hour worked. It appears the violation primarily affected newly hired employees but also included several longtime workers.
“The number of times this company has failed to pay workers what we are owed or done something else to break the law is just crazy. These payments show me the company had the money to pay us all along. That is a company that does not respect us or value us,” said Pascual Salgado, a worker at Flying Food Group
After BCA notified Flying Food Group of the violation, the company began issuing payments to affected workers last week, with individual payments reportedly ranging from several hundred dollars to approximately $14,000. Flying Food Group has since submitted a list of workers it says have been paid, and BCA is now reviewing whether all affected employees were included and whether the payment amounts fully compensate workers for what they are owed.
Flying Food Group has violated the Living Wage Ordinance on multiple occasions previously, with multiple “notice of corrections” issued to the company and its subcontractors by BCA and two class action lawsuits, and the company agreeing to paying millions in back wages to workers. The company has twice sued the City, claiming the Living Wage Ordinance did not apply to them, and in the last instance, the settlement agreement included a commitment by the company that they would not make such a challenge again.
The discovery marks the latest alleged labor law violation involving Flying Food Group. In addition to the past violations of the Living Wage Ordinance, the company has also received citations or settled complaints with Cal/OSHA, the California Labor Commissioner, the National Labor Relations Board and the California Highway Patrol..
Flying Food Group is an airline catering company that provides in-flight meals for international airlines flying out of LAX like Lufthansa, Air France, SWISS Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Austrian Airlines, LOT Polish, Scandinavian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Japan Airlines, ANA, Starlux, China Southern Qantas, Air New Zealand, and Hawaiian Airlines. Flying Food Group was recently given only a 6-month license extension by the City of Los Angeles which lasts until the end of 2026.