Employees at 15 Philadelphia airport restaurants thought they got a contract in June. Management denies any agreement was made.

The cooks, servers, cashiers, bartenders, dishwashers, and other unionized staff at 15 restaurants in Philadelphia International Airport thought they had finally won a new contract last June, after four years of bargaining with their employer, OTG.

The agreement included wage increases, holiday pay, and decreases in their health-care premiums — eventually health care would be free for the employee and much less costly for the employee’s dependents.

The workers waited months to see those changes go into effect. Then, in December, their employer told union representatives that there had been no agreement.

“It was essentially gaslighting,” said Michael Lagansky, a server at Local Tavern in Terminal F, who was present for the collective bargaining sessions last year. “They called union leaders liars.”

In an emailed statement Tuesday, the company said: “OTG has been a pro-labor, pro-union company since its inception. We deny these baseless charges, as any claim that OTG and Unite Here Local 274 reached a contractual agreement is not true.”

The company made a new proposal in January, which stripped out many of the changes in health-care costs and holiday pay. The union that represents OTG workers, Unite Here Local 274, has filed a new charge with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of the more than 200 people waiting on a contract.

The charge, filed in late January, alleged that OTG “has failed to bargain in good faith ... by repudiating the terms of an agreed upon collective-bargaining agreement and by refusing to execute a written contract setting forth the terms of that agreement.” NLRB press secretary Kayla Blado acknowledged that the board is investigating the charge, as well as two other cases Unite Here filed against OTG last spring.

Meanwhile, the union employees wait. They got raises last summer, which they understood to be the first step of implementing a new contract, but they’re still waiting on back pay — more than $300,000, according to the union — as well as holiday pay and lower health insurance premiums.

“Them taking so long to sign people’s contracts, it’s playing a role in people’s lives,” said Vincent Becoat, a cook at Cibo in Terminal B. “The health-care part is a big issue. A lot of us need that.”

OTG’s nonmanagement workers unionized in 2014 and got their first contract in 2015. It expired in 2018, and they’ve continued to work under the 2015 terms since then. The union and OTG management bargained on and off for several years to reach a new contract.

In the meantime, airport workers across various employers have won better pay through city legislation. That allowed OTG workers to see their wages increase even though their contract had expired, but the contract they thought they had reached last year would have included additional raises.

Lagansky was hired by OTG in September 2021. “I remember starting and there was a lot of talk about how the contract had been expired since prior to COVID,” he said.

When he learned about a new round of bargaining starting in January 2022, he decided to get involved. He attended every bargaining session, and in mid-June the union and employer reached what he called “a handshake agreement.”

Union members voted on June 22 to ratify a contract based on the terms in that agreement.

Rosslyn Wuchinich, president of Unite Here Local 274, said she has e-mails from the company’s vice president of labor relations acknowledging that the union and OTG management had reached an agreement on contract terms and acknowledging that workers voted to ratify it.

“Our position is that there was a contract, and they need to honor that contract, and that what they’ve done is illegal,” Wuchinich said.

The workers have picketed several times since December, with local elected officials and leaders of other labor organizations attending in support.

“We’re very confident that if the entire legal process were to play out, it would be favorable to the union,” Lagansky said, but that could be a while. With no contract in sight, “the morale in the workplace is rough,” he said.

OTG, in its statement, said the company wants to reach an agreement soon. “We continue to negotiate with Unite Here Local 274 in good faith, with the shared goal of finalizing a new contract that benefits our hardworking crew members as swiftly as possible,” OTG said.