Meal deal

I have the letter in my pocket. I received it the day before yesterday; it says that my application for a mortgage has been accepted. It was my dream to buy my own house but now I've lost my job along with 670 colleagues, I don't think that will ever happen.

I started working for Gate Gourmet in April 2000 as a catering assistant, helping the chefs to prepare the food for the aeroplanes. I always wanted to work in catering because it was easy to find a job and it offered a good opportunity to earn money, even if you're not that well educated. Eventually, I ended up as a checker in despatch, which paid £7.51 an hour because of the skills and experience that were required.

Producing in-flight food is very important work. It's not just the passengers who need to eat but also the pilot and cabin crew. What we cooked wasn't just healthy, good-quality food, it needed to be very safe as well. You can't cut corners in this business. Working at Gate Gourmet was just the same as working in a restaurant kitchen - standards are just as high.

Just like in a restaurant, at Gate Gourmet the chefs cook everything. The difference is that for airlines we only part-cook the food and then freeze it very quickly. When you get a meal on the aeroplane, it's not just reheated during the flight, it's being cooked. After the chefs have finished they pass the food on to the food-assembly department. Four or five people work on a production belt, with each person responsible for one piece of the meal.

The work could be boring but a lot depends on the atmosphere of the production line. When you spend more time at work than at home you need to make sure that you have fun. After the food assembly comes tray assembly, where the finished tray is assembled. At this stage, the items that you might need with a meal such as cutlery or glasses are added. Then the whole lot goes into the massive freezers for four to six hours, where it is stored until someone like me assembles a trolley full of trays which a lorry takes to the aeroplanes. It takes about eight hours from being cooked to getting on the plane.

The problems started here because Gate Gourmet wanted to use cheaper labour and it was closing down all the departments, which we all thought was affecting the quality. There used to be a bakery for short-haul flights, but now there's only one for long-haul flights. The staff used to make very good food here. The club-class hot meal dinners used to look really nice - we used to do chicken cooked with onion and ginger and that came with a nice bread roll and a sweet - but now I think the quality has gone down.

The company said that staff were trying to stop the cheaper labour that it wanted to bring in. It thought that the staff were just agitating, so the company got hold of the ones that it thought were responsible and forced them into the canteen; within three minutes the manager came upstairs into the canteen and told them, "You are all sacked." Right then he started collecting their cards and their locker keys and he threw them out. The security had been prearranged and the police were there and within five minutes they had been kicked out.

I was sacked later because I supported my colleagues. All we want to do is work - that's it, that's why we're protesting. We are not asking for pay rises, or extra money or anything.

We are sorry for the people who have had their holidays disrupted by our protest but for us this is a matter of life. Hopefully, if people support what we are doing here and we have the full backing of our union, we still have some hope.

· Appolo Younus was talking to Andrew Shanahan.