On January 4, 300 HMS Host workers at the Vancouver Airport (YVR) received notice that the company was prepared to lock them out within 72 hours. Host workers have been working without a union contract since March 2009. The lockout notice came unprovoked. Workers had not taken a strike vote or job action.
Surprisingly, Host is prepared to lock out 300 food service workers on the eve of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. YVR will see record traffic from Olympics visitors in the month of February during the 3 weeks of the Olympics and as well as before and after the Games. The Host workers affected by the lockout notice work at 18 food, beverage and retail outlets at YVR. Host committee leader Uli De la Rosa said, "we are the ambassadors for the Olympics visitors. We are the first ones visitors see when they come to Vancouver."
Host workers are fighting for job security, better wages and improved benefits eligibility. Sixty workers at a Milestones Restaurant operated by Host at YVR will lost their jobs immediately after the Olympics when Host closes the restaurant and opens a White Spot restaurant nearby. Host has told workers the White Spot will be non-union. Wages are also a big issue as many Host workers start at little more than minimum wage.
Host committee leader and Tim Horton’s cashier, Cora Asiatico commented on the lockout notice, "it’s like a slap in the face. All the hard work we put in, it’s going to be down the drain. But we will not be bullied. They can’t hold a gun to our heads and say ‘that’s it for you’."
Committee leader Kam Ram, working at YVR for 19 years said, "I never expected this from the company. But we are fighters, we are going to fight for this. Those are our brothers and sisters at Milestones. We have to support them for their job security. What’s happening to them can affect any of us."
On January 9, Host workers held an emergency membership meeting and voted unanimously to defy the lockout threat and stay strong on their contract demands. In preparation for lockout, the Host committee has signed up their co-workers for picket duty shifts.
In August of 2009, union contracts expired for over 9000 hotel workers in San Francisco. Since then hotel workers have been standing together to defend their healthcare and retirement standards.
On Tuesday, January 5, over one thousand hotel workers and their community allies took to the streets in downtown San Francisco, demonstrating against major hotel corporations’ refusal to settle a fair contract. They were joined by Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, who along with over 100 union members and community supporters will participate in nonviolent civil disobedience. The demonstration also launches a customer boycott of the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. Visit Local 2’s website for more information.
Click here to read more, or watch the video below about the contract fight.
The H1N1 (swine flu) virus remains a major concern for hospitality industry workers throughout North America. Unite Here Local 11 has released a short video entitled "It’s a Small World: Disney and the H1N1 Virus" about Disney hotel workers, mainly in Anaheim, California, who are concerned about contracting or spreading the H1N1 virus at their workplace. Currently over 1500 Disney workers lack paid sick days, and workers can be given disciplinary "points" for staying home ill. Watch the video now on YouTube. Share it with others you know via email, social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and blogs. If you have information about cases of H1N1 among visitors or workers at Disney hotels or parks, send an email with the story to [email protected].
In LA’s No. 1 job-generating industry, workers say hospitality industry must provide quality jobs to rebuild LA’s economy
More than 600 hotel workers picketed in front of the Hyatt Andaz West Hollywood Friday evening, December 4, calling on the hotel chain to improve working standards in its hotels. The picket and rally marked the expiration of 21 union hotel contracts in Los Angeles, including those at the Hyatt Andaz and the Hyatt Century Plaza. Workers have already begun negotiations with Hyatt management.
"Tourism is the number one job-generating industry in Los Angeles," said Rocksand Ramirez, a housekeeper at the Hyatt Century Plaza. "We must make sure these are good jobs."
According to a LA County Economic Development Corporation report released in June, tourism surpassed international trade as LA’s biggest industry. But an LA Times article reported there is concern among some economists that the news is bad for the LA economy because the hospitality industry creates too many low-paying jobs.
On Friday, Local 11 workers said it doesn’t have to be that way.
"The tourism industry in LA is at a crossroads," said Lorena Lopez, a Local 11 organizer. "The Hyatt and other hotels have the opportunity to take the high road — providing strong union contracts with livable wages and affordable health benefits that act as a boon to our local economy."
Benjamin Leonen, a lead cook at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach, a non-union hotel, described the hotel industry’s other option.
"The Hyatt already showed us what the low road looks like when it used the recession as an excuse to fire 100 experienced housekeepers in Boston," Leonen said. "The Hyatt, which made $1.3 billion in profit from 2004 to 2008, fired the housekeepers to replace them with staffing agency employees who make $8 an hour."
Ramirez said she and her co-workers at the Century Plaza are prepared to do whatever it takes to hold on to their affordable health benefits and rights on the job.
"We’ve been preparing for this moment for months," Ramirez said. "We are united, committed and ready to fight for what we deserve."
The study, based on 55,000 worker-years of observation of 2,865 injuries at 50 unionized hotel properties, is the first to analyze the difference in injury rates by both sex and race/ethnicity among hotel workers. Among its findings, the study indicates that women hotel workers were 1.5 times more likely to be injured than men, Hispanic women had almost double the risk of injury of their white female counterparts, and Hispanic and Asian males about 1.5 times more likely to be injured than white males.
"These alarming results raise many questions as to why injury rates are so high for women, and Hispanic and Asian workers in the hotel sector," states Dr. Susan Buchanan of the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health and lead author of the article.
The report also shows that among the different job classifications in hotels, housekeepers face the highest rate of injury. "The excess risk among women probably reflects the fact that so many of them work in the very demanding job of room cleaner," notes Dr. Laura Punnett, a co-author from University of Massachusetts Lowell. "The excess risk among Hispanic housekeepers compared to other housekeepers is more difficult to explain, and requires further study."
Celia Alvarez knows this pain firsthand. She worked at the non-union Hyatt Regency in Long Beach, California for 19 years as a housekeeper before becoming permanently injured in her lower back and shoulder. "Cleaning between 25 to 30 rooms a day demands working fast and this is how I hurt my body. There isn’t time to take care of our bodies. I can no longer work as a housekeeper. I have pain every day."
The study also indicates that injury rates vary by employer. Given this variation, University of California San Francisco researcher and study co-author Dr. Niklas Krause says, "The observed substantial differences between hotel companies and different worker groups point to a high potential for prevention of these injuries. It is time, especially for those companies with the worst rates, to make a concerted effort to halt this disparate occurrence of work-related pain and suffering."
Though the study itself did not identify the companies involved, Pamela Vossenas, Unite Here Health and Safety Specialist, announced today that, "The top five US hotel companies included are: Hilton (Company 1), Hyatt (Company 2), Intercontinental (Company 3), Marriott (Company 4) and Starwood (Company 5)."
In addition to researchers from the universities named above, the study includes co-authors from Hunter College School of Health Sciences and Unite Here, the union of hotel workers in North America.
"This study is stunning evidence of the unequal impact of injuries in the hotel industry, and it calls into question whether discriminatory workplace practices play a role," says John Wilhelm, President of Unite Here. "Hyatt, with the highest reported injury rate for housekeepers, needs to make changes immediately that will keep housekeepers safe and pain-free at work."
After months of working with no contract and facing the prospect of losing the free family health benefits that they’d been receiving for years, the cafeteria workers at Hunter College finally won a collective bargaining agreement from AVI Foodsystems. This contract — ratified unanimously on October 27 — includes free family health benefits, a significant employer contribution to the employee’s retirement plan, and substantial wage increases over the next three years.
This victory did not come without a struggle. The fact that the workers got to keep their wages, will get a raise the next two years, and will get to keep their health benefits, resulted in large part from the worker and student actions that took place on the Hunter campus.
On September 3rd 2009, the workers staged a 15-minute work stoppage and rallied for health benefits and pension inside the cafeteria in front of students in the middle of the lunch hour rush (see the video of that action here). Soon after, the workers and their union, Unite Here Local 100, reached out to the Hunter College students and faculty for support. After weeks of organizing and with the great support from the Professional Staff Congress, the CUNY faculty union, the Hunter College community staged a rally of around 150 people at the Hunter College main campus on October 5th. Lisa Cooper, a food service workers at Hunter College for 24 years who spoke at the rally said afterwards: "We had great support from the students and the faculty. The rally was really wonderful. I’m so proud of everybody; students, faculty and everybody. I thank them all."
After an unsuccessful negotiation on October 8th, Hunter students and faculty began organizing a boycott of AVI at the Hunter College cafeteria to take place on October 29th unless AVI agreed to give the workers a fair contract. Students and faculty collected over 1000 pledges to boycott the cafeteria on the 29th. Then, on Friday October 23, facing the prospect of an impending boycott, AVI finally agreed to the workers’ reasonable requests. As a result, the boycott was canceled, and the workers were able to celebrate their victory.
Deborah Johnson, a cashier at Hunter College for ten years summed up their month-long struggle with AVI: "It was really stressful for all of us not knowing if we were going to have any health coverage …[but] we’re survivors. To get a bonus, that was wonderful. To get our health benefits. To get the 401k union plan. That’s something we really wanted to have. And we got what we want."
Local 11 members preserve free family health care and tuition waiver for employees’ children admitted to USC
LOS ANGELES – More than 600 University of Southern California food service workers, represented by Unite Here Local 11, ratified a new contract on Friday, Oct. 16 with a significant wage increase and the preservation of free family healthcare.
The USC employees won wage increases of up to $2.45 per hour and upheld the Local 11 standard of free, full family medical coverage throughout the life of the contract. "With Unite Here we have a long tradition of organizing for strong contracts with big improvements, and this victory is just another example," said Alfredo Valle, a food server at USC for more than 25 years.
Employees won access to enroll in a 403(b) retirement savings account with an up to 10 percent contribution from the university. They also preserved the tuition waiver benefit, which allows employees’ children, if admitted, to attend the university free of charge.
"With UNITE HERE we have a long tradition of organizing for strong contracts with big improvements, and this victory is just another example," said Alfredo Valle, a food server at USC for more than 25 years.
Just as bargaining got underway last month, 80 food service workers took their demands to USC President Steven Sample to demonstrate their organizational power and commitment to winning a strong contract.
In solidarity, student activists joined workers in support of a strong contract.
"This is our campus food service, we must encourage the university to set a standard for sustainability and economic justice for all," said Charlie Carnow, a USC Master’s candidate and campus activist.
Other contract gains include, significant increases in the wage rate for summer work, increased summer work opportunities for food service workers based on seniority, enhancement of gratuity opportunities for banquet servers and the a reduced workload for USC Hotel room attendants.
Hyatt housekeepers have launched a seven-city national tour to bring awareness to the mistreatment of women working at Hyatt Hotels and the hotel industry more broadly. The symbol of the Hope for Housekeepers tour is the Hope Quilt, which has been crafted by housekeepers from across the country. As the tour has progressed from city to city, housekeepers have added patches to the quilt, which is now more than 130 feet long just halfway through the tour. With each patch symbolizing a story of pain or injury brought on by the heavy burden of housekeeping work, the quilt makes visible the lives and struggle of housekeepers everywhere.
The tour was launched in Long Beach in late September and has traveled to northern California and San Antonio, where hundreds of Hyatt workers are organizing. In each city, Hyatt housekeepers have marched with the Hope Quilt along with prominent women leaders and community supporters, who have joined the Hope for Housekeepers campaign in solidarity.
Hope for Housekeepers is a national campaign of women, founded by Hyatt housekeepers across the nation to stop the abuse of women in the hotel industry. Nearly all hotel housekeepers are women, and the work they do is difficult and sometimes dangerous. In a survey of over 600 housekeepers by UNITE HERE, 91% of housekeepers reported that they have suffered work-related pain. Non-union Hyatt housekeepers often clean as many as 30 hotel rooms a day in just eight hours, and many forgo health insurance for their families because of the high cost. Even worse, Hyatt is slashing jobs, discarding women like the Hyatt 100 in Boston who were fired after training their replacements from an outsourcing agency.
Now Hyatt housekeepers are stepping forward to put an end to this abuse. Hyatt housekeepers are uniting with women from across the country to bring a message of hope to the thousands of women working as housekeepers around the globe. Unionized housekeepers have fought for and won more humane workloads, cleaning around 15 rooms a day, to reduce the rate of injury and pain that can lead to permanent disability in this dangerous line of work. These housekeepers have affordable health insurance and job security that rewards women for their years of service.
The tour builds on years of work that Unite Here’s Hotel Workers Rising campaign has lead to improve worker safety and bring greater equality to jobs in the hotel industry. For more information, or to sign the Hope for Housekeepers solidarity pledge, visit www.hotelworkersrising.com/hope.
Chi Town Daily News–Hundreds of protesters marked the sixth anniversary of a strike over labor conditions at The Congress Plaza Hotel and Convention Center on Monday, stretching a picket line down a block-long stretch of South Michigan Avenue. On June 15, 2003, almost six months after their contracts expired, workers at the Congress Hotel went on strike. Union organizers say hotel management cut wages, stopped paying employee health-care premiums and demanded the right to subcontract its unionized workforce.
The rally was both a celebration of the strike’s persistence and a lament of stalled negotiations with hotel owners and representatives. Among the strikers’ supporters were Gov. Pat Quinn, state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias and aldermen Bob Fioretti and Ricardo Munoz. Each was present and spoke at the protest.
"This hotel has not treated its workers right" Quinn yelled from a podium between Michigan Avenue traffic and the hotel’s lower east floors. "We will have justice."
Chi Town Daily News–Hundreds of protesters marked the sixth anniversary of a strike over labor conditions at The Congress Plaza Hotel and Convention Center on Monday, stretching a picket line down a block-long stretch of South Michigan Avenue. On June 15, 2003, almost six months after their contracts expired, workers at the Congress Hotel went on strike. Union organizers say hotel management cut wages, stopped paying employee health-care premiums and demanded the right to subcontract its unionized workforce.