Airline catering company Flying Food Group (FFG) is the latest California-based hospitality group to be targeted by state lawmakers trying to enforce a union-backed bill which affects the rehiring process in the hospitality industry. The Labor Commissioner's Office of California has recently accused Flying Food Group of violating Senate Bill 93, citing the company over $1.2 million for not promptly rehiring 21 workers who were laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic when the company expanded its operations and started hiring again, as mandated by law.
“Flying Food Group has the highest respect for all our employees, and we value them and the work they do every day. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have sought to minimize the impact of the pandemic on our team members and have consistently prioritized recalling team members back to work as soon as possible. Even before California’s COVID-19 recall statute took effect in April 2021, we recalled hundreds of employees,” Mark Noffke, Vice President of Finance at Flying Food Group, told the Southern California Record. “As part of our commitment to our team members, we follow all applicable federal, state and local laws and regulations.”
Prior to the pandemic, FFG agreed to a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with its California employees, according to the company. Within those agreements, FFG specifically negotiated recall rights with the unions. The unions, however, went around the CBA and encouraged the California legislature to pass SB-93– a law which provides recall rights to employees in the airline and hospitality industry through December 31, 2024 if they were laid off as a result of COVID-19. The legislature passed SB-93 on April 16, 2021.
As part of the recall process, FFG sent over 2,000 letters to former employees offering them jobs, many of which went unanswered. Noffke points out that it isn’t the company that is at fault, but ambiguity in the law itself.
According to an Aug. 17 news release, investigation conducted by the Labor Commissioner's Office concluded that FFG had violated the Right to Recall law, leading the office to impose a citation of $1,220,330. This amount included $1,190,500 in liquidated damages, $2,100 in civil penalties, and $27,730 in assessed interest.
The Right to Recall law–in effect from April 16, 2021, through Dec. 31, 2024–applies to workers in hotels or private clubs with at least 50 guest rooms, airports, airport service providers, event centers, and laid-off employees in building services at retail and commercial buildings. Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower states that the purpose of this law was to prevent worker displacement during the pandemic through no fault of their own, and that their pursuit in this case aligns with that goal. She emphasized that the workers had invested years in the company, but the company failed to rehire them as required by the law. The Labor Commissioner's Office is committed to investigating until the workers are appropriately compensated
The highest-profile enforcement action so far, according to the Northern California Record, was announced in March of 2022 by the California Department of Industrial Relations, as the California Labor Commissioner cited $3.3 million in fines against the posh Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes for failing to adhere to the Right to Recall law by offering 53 laid-off employees their jobs back in 2021.
The Labor Commissioner announced the $3.3 million fine before any hearings and without a detailed explanation of how the resort had violated the law, NorCal Record says. “What they do is they will issue a fine before any hearing,” Anthony Caso, a constitutional law attorney and senior legal fellow for the Claremont Institution, said in a telephone interview with Northern California Record. “You can contest the citation -- that’s when you get the hearing. But in the meantime the news goes out that a citation has been issued and your business takes a hit to its reputation.”