Toronto, Ontario-"A majority of 100 drivers, driver/helpers and warehouse workers of Sleep Country Canada’s Toronto distribution center voted this week to be represented by UNITE HERE. Sleep Country is Canada’s leading, and best-known, specialty retailer of mattresses. Best known? The entire nation can sing their advertising jingle by heart.

Despite Sleep Country’s great commercial success, drivers, driver/helpers and warehouse workers were quick to sign up for union representation: they were especially concerned about increasing workload and no seniority rights. First contract negotiations are to begin immediately.

In a successful event held on Saturday, December 3, UNITE HERE union members joined Toronto hotel workers, local labor leaders, celebrities, and community leaders to publicly support a campaign to raise the standard of living for hotel workers across the city and internationally. Actor and activist Danny Glover, Mayor David Miller,UNITE HERE President Bruce Raynor, Local 75 President Paul Clifford and various hotel workers hosted a press conference to explain the main issues at stake. -�Hotel workers should not have to work two jobs, sacrifice our health and have our children live in poverty,-� said hotel worker Zeleda Davis, also a UNITE HERE Local 75 member. -�We have a vision that we would create good jobs, promotional and training opportunities so that workers like me can live and retire with dignity and security.-�

-�The hotel sector is prospering and it must not exploit the hardworking men and women, immigrants and people of color who provide the services to make their profits possible,-� said Danny Glover. -�Raising standards of living will benefit hotel workers and their communities and enable them to provide the first class services that make the tourism industry work in Toronto and in cities across North America.-�

To read more about the international UNITE HERE hotel workers campaign, visit www.hotelworkersunited.org.

Montreal, Quebec-"On November 30, the 4,000 members of the men’s clothing industry affiliated with the UNITE HERE Quebec Council ratified a new master collective agreement that will govern various industry employers.

The agreement provides important improvements to workers’ wages, insurance and pension benefits, and provides restrictions on the use of temporary workers. "Given the economic context, the negotiation of this collective agreement was very difficult, but extremely important for our members," said Lina Aristeo, director of the UNITE HERE Quebec Council. This is the first time in over a decade that this contract was ratified without a strike. Instead, members fought in their shops with a -�negotiation survival kit-� which included whistles, bandannas, buttons and instruction sheets for daily actions.

St. Paul, MN-"On November 18, UNITE HERE Local 17 members voted to accept a new contract with HMS Host at the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport, following several months of tense negotiations. Highlights include maintaining current health insurance with no added costs to members, improvements to vacation language, a $25 monthly Perfect Attendance/Mass Transit reimbursement, training pay language, voluntary layoff language, improvements to bereavement language and decent wage increases for all members over the term of the agreement.

Carrying signs reading "O’Hare Airport Starbucks Unfair to Workers," hundreds of UNITE HERE Local 1 restaurant workers at O’Hare picketed in front of the airport terminals for three weeks in October to wrap up their seven-month contract fight. The 900 HMS Host workers joined Local 1 in February to build a stronger Union. Since then, the workers have been building their committee and engaging in actions to win their best contract yet. Highlights include a $2.40 wage increase over four years for the non-tipped workers and a decrease in the workers’ monthly copays for health insurance from $90 to $19 for individual coverage and from $250 to $85 for family coverage.

"We fought hard for the best contract since we’ve been working at the airport. Now we need to make the contract work for us and keep moving forward toward the contract fight in 2009," said Boddrick Barnes, a cook at Fox Sky Box at O’Hare and a member of the negotiating committee.

On Wednesday, November 16, 2005, the workers at the Fairmont Royal York voted to ratify a renewed three-year collective agreement. It covers virtually all the frontline service staff -" 850 cooks, stewards, room attendants, housepersons, servers, laundry, bell, door, valet, switchboard and bartenders. "This agreement is good for Royal York workers, good for the city’s hotel industry and good for Toronto. It contains a fair wage increase, excellent benefits, a more humane workload, and the promise of better jobs for current and future hotel workers," says Paul Clifford, President, UNITE HERE Local 75.

Wage increases ranged from 9.3% to 10.5% over three years, with the lowest paid non-gratuity classifications getting the larger raises. In response to the Union’s "Stop the Pain" campaign, the workload for room attendants was reduced and Health and Safety provisions strengthened. The Fairmont Royal York contract sets new, higher standards for thousands of the city’s hotel workers.

When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast region in late August, thousands of UNITE HERE members were left without homes, basic necessities, and their jobs. Since then, UNITE HERE members and staff have helped implement local programs to locate and support displaced members, including visiting local shelters, providing wage and benefit information and financial assistance. But hurricane victims will continue to need our assistance in order to rebuild their lives and their communities, and create a stronger middle-class out of the devastation in the region.

This holiday season, please consider giving generously to the UNITE HERE Hurricane Relief Fund. Your contributions are tax-deductible and will go a long way to making sure that our members and their families can enjoy their holiday season.

The members of the Mid-Atlantic Region and Local 25 endorsed Baltimore City Mayor Martin O’Malley for Governor of Maryland. This marks the first time in the current gubernatorial race that all of a labor union’s affiliates with members in Maryland have gotten behind the same candidate.

Late last week, a coalition of unions, community organizations and faith-based groups in Minneapolis won the nation’s most recent living wage victory when the City Council voted overwhelmingly to strengthen a previous living wage policy. Under the new ordinance, companies with city contracts or city subsidies worth $100,000 or more or those that receive city subsidies of $100,000 or more must pay a wage of $12.09 per hour. The ordinance also includes enforcement mechanisms and financial penalties for organizations that fail to comply.

Labor coalition members include UNITE HERE Local 17, SEIU Minnesota State Council, Teamsters DRIVE, the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council, and the Twin Cities Coalition of Labor Union Women. Since 1994, more than 100 communities have enacted living wage laws, which cover a wide range of workers-“municipal employees, those working for city and county contractors, health care workers and college and university employees.

On October 24, we bid goodbye to Rosa Parks, the civil rights leader who became famous when she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus to a white man, and who helped lead the ensuing civil rights movement. Mrs. Parks worked with the UNITE HERE Civil Rights department on several occasions, most specifically with our civil rights designees as one of our first presenters to our predecessor union ACTWU during a Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in Atlanta. She charged us with staying focused on the importance of civil rights and human rights, and she made special comments to the diversity of our committee and saluted our union for our vision in making diversity a reality rather than rhetoric.Mrs. Parks was a personal friend to Martha Wilson from our Detroit office/region and to International Vice President Clayola Brown.

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