Former workers claim funds for their health insurance

By:
Manuel Ocaño / Special for La Opinion
December 18, 2020

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Don Ramón Valencia worked 39 years at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), he was fired since March and this Monday he died after contracting COVID-19, his family said.

They add that this happened without the company, which hired him to work at LAX, fulfilling an agreement that consisted of making contributions to a fund so that former employees would still have health services after losing their jobs.

While his family has had to resort to the goodwill of the community to raise funds and cover the expenses of Don Ramón’s burial, his death renewed a lawsuit filed by more than 800 former employees of the HMS Host corporation, who are still waiting of the corporation’s funds – many of them nine months after being laid off.

A contingent of the fired workers arrived this Thursday in a car caravan near the LAX airport where, from the top of a building, they deployed two vertical parallel blankets along four floors of a parking lot: “HMS Host Pay up” ( HMS Host, pay), said the blankets.

“In reality, if it weren’t for the union making payments for a mutual fund so that the unemployed of that company could maintain health services, many of us don’t know what we would have done,” Carlos Castillo told La Opinion, who said that for 21 years he was bartender at the airport, until he was fired on March 19.

Castillo, who is diabetic and a father of a family, added that since the company unemployed him, in the midst of the pandemic, it has been impossible for him to find work.

“My case can be representative along with my dismissed colleagues. There are, among the rested, many who worked for the same company for more than 20 or 30 years, that we did not have any consideration or recognition ”from the company, he indicated.

What is alleged about that fund of money?

The union, UniteHere 11, reported yesterday that unemployed workers were informed last month that the company “is behind in payments of more than a million dollars in contributions. [para que los exempleados puedan obtener] Benefits [de salud]”.

UniteHere11 explained that these payments were agreed between the company and the city of Los Angeles, after the HMS Host company benefited from a rent relief program granted by the city for LAX dealers.

HMS Host is the largest airport concession operator in North America. Its parent company is owned by a family of Italian billionaires whose publicly traded company had assets valued at $ 13.8 billion last year.

According to María Hernández, spokeswoman for UniteHere 11, the corporation’s lack of compliance with the workers’ benefit fund puts even unemployed workers at greater risk.

He said that “90% of HMS Host workers at LAX are people of color, mostly Latino and African American” – two of the ethnic groups most devastated by the pandemic.

But in addition, most of the fired workers “live in some of the communities most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Mr. Carlos Castillo acknowledged that “it has become more difficult to find work because the Los Angeles businesses have shown a high level of loyalty and solidarity with their employees.”

“When many restaurants had the opportunity to partially reopen their doors to the public, they immediately called those who already worked there when they had to close due to the pandemic … In the case of the airport it was different, they did not call us, we did not find other positions, and then from decades of working there, we don’t know other trades, “he said.

La Opinion contacted the company HMS Host to discuss the case of Mr. Ramón Valencia and the apparent delay in benefit payments to the dismissed workers.

A company spokeswoman said, on condition of anonymity, that “unfortunately Ramón passed away, but that he did not contract COVID-19 at work. He had insurance through a fund and the company has not been able to contact his family to find out how he can help ”.

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