Author Archives for Ann Kammerer
The city of Detroit has had a lot of attention in 2014—and not all of it good. But UNITE HERE Local 24 has taken advantage of a number of major recent downtown events to bring attention to organizing efforts at the Crowne Plaza Detroit and the DoubleTree Detroit.
Built right next to the Cobo Center, the Crowne Plaza Ponchartrain Hotel is the city’s major convention hotel. Shuttered by foreclosure in 2009, a Mexican hotelier bought and reopened the property 2013. Local 24 brought a 300-person picket line of members and allies to opening day, calling attention to the hotel’s role in lowering labor standards in the heart of the city.
Workers have recently organized more substantial rallies with their allies. In May, they brought out 150 picketers from the AFT, the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO, and other groups. Over 1,000 UAW convention delegates flooded the streets in July for a solidarity rally. Then, thousands at the Motor City Pride parade marched past the Crowne Plaza and expressed their support for the workers.
On the same day as Pride, Local 24 members also turned out to support community, feminist, and LGBT activist groups protesting a so-called “men’s rights” conference at the DoubleTree Detroit. Formerly known as the Fort Shelby Hotel, the workers’ participation helped raise awareness of their boycott of the property.
At the end of July, Local 24 again highlighted these campaigns for Netroots, a top communications convention for unions and progressive organizations. UNITE HERE participated in big way, by including the Crowne Plaza as a stop on the convention’s union tour of Detroit, turning out members to the massive protest against municipal water shut-offs, and sharing ice cream with Netroots participants who joined a special DoubleTree picket line.
Members of the Service Trades Council Union ratified a new agreement with the Walt Disney World Resort in a vote on August 1. Workers came to a tentative agreement with the resort late on July 18.
The new contract covers 21,000 workers, more than 60% of whom are represented by UNITE HERE Local 737 and UNITE HERE Local 362 in Orlando. Many UNITE HERE custodians, housekeepers, attractions attendants, and food and beverage employees participated in union negotiations for their first time.
The deal features unprecedented wage increases, including a minimum hourly rate of $10 starting in 2016. The agreement also preserves pensions for new hires and—for the first time in many years—freezes employees’ weekly health insurance contributions in 2015.
Workers have been demonstrating their enthusiasm for central Florida’s renewed organizing spirit with actions of over 1,000 people, including a uniformed parade through downtown Disney earlier this summer.
Read more from the Orlando Sentinel.
Visit UNITE HERE Local 737 and 362 on Facebook.
A report released today by UNITE HERE reveals racial inequality in job classification among surveyed workers in the concessions program at BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport, raising further questions about the true impact of the airport’s concessions program on economic progress in Baltimore and the surrounding region. The report finds:
- Racial Disparity in Job Classifications: Surveyed African-American workers disproportionately staffed typically lower income and lower status positions such as back-of-the-house jobs and fast food jobs, while surveyed white worker disproportionately staffed front-of-the-house restaurant positions such as bartender and server.
- A Majority African-American Workforce: 59% of surveyed BWI food and retail workers were African-American; 83% of surveyed African-American workers lived in Baltimore.
- A Low Percentage of African-American Owned DBEs: Just 7.5% (3 of 40) airport concessions operators are African-American owned “disadvantaged businesses.”
“I make $8 per hour in my job at McDonald’s,” said Natalie Hickman, a two-year airport employee and Baltimore City resident, “Working in fast food is one of the hardest and lowest-paying jobs in the airport and, looking around, it’s obvious to see that almost all of us working in BWI’s fast food restaurants are African-American.”
The BWI concessions program is managed by a private developer, AirMall USA. This is not the first time that issues have been raised about the AirMall-managed program. For nearly two years, airport food and retail workers have testified to numerous job quality issues among them insufficient wages, poor job security and inadequate benefits. These have led to questions about AirMall’s role at the airport from elected, community and religious leaders.
This new report adds fuel to the fire. In a letter issued Monday morning, over 50 signatories including the Maryland State Conference (MSC) NAACP, Senator Catherine Pugh, the Caucus of African American Leaders and other political, labor and religious leaders called for the Maryland Aviation Administration and AirMall to investigate the issue of racial and wage inequality at BWI. The letter specifies that AirMall’s contract with the state should be terminated if it fails to take these actions to address the problem.
“It’s unconscionable that racial inequality could exist at BWI’s concessions program,” said Gerald Stansbury, President of the MSC NAACP, “That this inequality should exist in a facility named in honor of Thurgood Marshall—one of this country’s most influential leaders in the struggle for equal rights—makes it even more egregious. AirMall USA and the MAA must take action to ensure that all airport concessions workers enjoy the same opportunities. Only then will BWI truly honor Thurgood’s legacy.”
Learn more:
- Download the report, “A Missed Opportunity: How the BWI concessions program fails Baltimore’s African-American community”
- Download the full list of signatories to the call for the Maryland Aviation Administration and AirMall USA to address racial inequality at BWI’s concessions program
Press coverage:
Workers at the Graton Resort & Casino in Sonoma County, California are now members of UNITE HERE, following an organizing drive to raise standards for workers in the region’s lucrative tourism industry.
The vote by 600 janitors, waiters, cooks, and gaming workers was run under an agreement between UNITE HERE and the Graton Federated Tribes, which allowed workers to choose freely whether to become union members without interference from their employer.
In results certified by an arbitrator on July 18, eligible employees voted 70% in favor of joining UNITE HERE Local 2850.
“Tourists spend a lot of money at casinos and restaurants here in Sonoma, but often the workers are living in poverty. We’re joining the union because we want to turn that around,” said Graton porter Kathy Winifield.
Read more in the Press Democrat: Graton Casino Workers Vote To Join Union
Nearly 200 textile workers in New Haven, Connecticut ratified a strong new union contract this July, despite uncertainty in the U.S. textile industry.
Workers at Uretek won wage increases, improved their health and vision plans while decreasing their costs, reduced mandatory overtime, and established a fairer promotion system to encourage more internal advancement.
The members of New England Joint Board Local 151 make polyurethane-coated fabrics for military applications and—increasingly—commercial products, like air mattresses. UNITE HERE members are proving time and again that we still can manufacture things in the United States while treating workers with the dignity and respect we deserve.
UNITE HERE Local 23 in Houston hosted its first successful airport worker convention on July 11 with the theme “Good Jobs for Airport Workers = Great Service for Houston’s Visitors.” Over 100 airport workers from both of the unionized Houston airport union concessions companies, as well as non-union concessions workers, gathered to welcome their special guest, Houston Mayor Annise Parker. Attendees pledged to work together to make changes on the job and changes in the city so that IAH truly may be the greatest airport in the world.
On July 4, workers at The Kahala Resort ratified their new contract with a 99% yes vote. They are the final UNITE HERE Local 5 hotel in Waikiki to ratify their contract. Now all UNITE HERE hotels in Waikiki have a contract that puts them on the same standard. Their wage increases will be effective as of July 1, 2014.
Over 800 UNITE HERE members will convene in Boston June 25-27 for the union’s Constitutional Convention.
Allies like Senator Elizabeth Warren, AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka, and more will join the delegates to celebrate five years of success since UNITE HERE’s last convention.
Since 2009, UNITE HERE has grown and changed the lives of thousands of working families—despite the effects of the global recession on hospitality and other industries we represent. Last year alone, UNITE HERE locals and affiliates organized nearly 10,000 new union workers.
Convention will give UNITE HERE leaders the opportunity to dedicate themselves publically to continue this level of growth. By the time of the next Convention, we want to have changed 50,000 more lives into ones with dignified wages, respect for safety, accessible family health care, and respect on the job.
For information about the Convention, check out www.unitehere2014.org or follow #UH2014 on Instagram and Twitter.
Against the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol building, Sodexo workers from Massachusetts, Indiana, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. are protesting a loophole in the Affordable Care Act.
Sodexo began to exploit the loophole in January, when the company re-classified 10,000 of its full-time employees as part-time by changing the way it calculates full-time status. Blaming Obamacare, Sodexo now says school-year workers have to average more than 30 hours a week on a 52-week calendar to qualify for benefits like healthcare and sick days–even though many don’t work year-round. As a result, 4,000 of these workers have been cut off from access to their existing health plans, in addition to losing paid sick leave and vacation pay.
Though the ACA does not mandate such cuts, nothing in the law prevents employers like Sodexo from changing the way it calculates full-time status, cutting off health benefits, and avoiding penalties under the law.
Members of the hospitality union UNITE HERE joined the employees of the giant, foreign-owned corporate food service provider to release a letter calling on policymakers to close this loophole to prevent similar actions by other employers. The activists are speaking out and delivering their demands to the IRS, one of the primary regulatory bodies that has the power to close the loophole in the healthcare law.
Under regulations issued by the IRS in February to prevent this same change from happening to teachers, educational institutions themselves are not allowed to include the summer months when calculating full-time status. However, the rule has not been applied to their service contractors like Sodexo–even though these workers also work on an academic calendar.
“Teachers aren’t part time, and neither are we. This is a major blow to those of us who have made our careers in food service,” said Chuck Long, a Sodexo worker at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts. “If Sodexo is allowed to do this who else will follow suit?”
Workers say a fix may be already on the way on one campus. “On Monday, Earlham College announced that Sodexo would fix its way of determining full-time status for its food service workers, changing it to one based on the academic year rather than the calendar year,” says Liz Helton, a cafeteria worker at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana who has been outspoken on the issue. “Whatever the outcome for us, there are still thousands of Sodexo workers at different schools where the Sodexo loophole needs to be closed. A company-wide policy that abuses the ACA requires a national response.”
The dozens of Sodexo workers also are contacting their Congressional representatives to launch a national effort to get Congress focused on closing the loophole. A growing grassroots movement is calling on Sodexo to change its ways in a petition that has already garnered over 1,500 signatures.
On April 30th, nearly 500 members of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO-UNITE HERE) marched through heavy rain with hundreds of allies to deliver a 220-foot-long supermajority petition to University President Peter Salovey. The petition called on Yale to maintain its leadership in positive labor relations by working with GESO to develop a fair process for graduate employees to decide on union representation, and to lead on several issues of immediate concern. Over 1,000 graduate employees signed the petition, constituting a supermajority of the bargaining unit as recognized at New York University last year.
Read some of the press coverage below:
The city of Detroit has had a lot of attention in 2014—and not all of it good. But UNITE HERE Local 24 has taken advantage of a number of major recent downtown events to bring attention to organizing efforts at the Crowne Plaza Detroit and the DoubleTree Detroit.
