Hotel Workers Rising

Hotel Workers Rising

Filipinos compose 75% of hotel workers in Toronto

By Pet G. Cleto

The world’s top ten international hotel chains and corporations, most of them established in the United States and Canada, are now contending with a strong union campaign led by hotel workers, aptly called “Hotel Workers Rising”.

Filipino hotel worker Eulalia Marcos is one of the heroic Davids in the forefront of the landmark campaign of UNITE HERE, a hotel, restaurant and apparel employees’ union, with a 6,000 membership of Toronto hotel workers. Filipinos make up 75% of all Toronto hotel workers, and immigrant women of colour are the overwhelming majority. Room attendants like Eula receive pay ranging from $10 an hour up to $14 an hour. The hotel workers’ median wage of $26,000 a year, one of the lowest incomes in the city, is in high contrast to the estimated $20.8 billion in profit in 2005 of the overall lodging industry.

The union envisions the automatic unionization of these big hotel chains globally, with contracts made in North America becoming models in countries like the Philippines.

Having one model contract for all Toronto hotels is the current step of the campaign. UNITEHERE Local 75’s coordinated campaign targets 30 hotels in Toronto where contracts expire this year.

The first hotel settlement has already been scored down as a victory at the downtown Sheraton Hotel,and has already been followed by contract settlements at the two Hilton hotels: the Downtown Hilton and the Airport Hilton.

Eula hopes the campaign will also be successful at her hotel, the downtown Toronto Delta Chelsea. Already deep into a bitter fight over job security, workload (16 beds per 8-hour shift), and low wages and benefits, the workers have had no contract since January. Early in the negotiations, a member of the negotiating committee, Victoria Sobrepeña, was fired. During the August International AIDS Conference, 70 of the workers, Eula included, were suspended because they had defied management’s order to remove buttons which expressed the workers’ solidarity with the conference. Prompt mass action by the workers, support from the conference, media attention, and public pressure made management take back the suspension. However, the hotel later announced a stop to the arbitration and grievance process.

The life of a room attendant and union activist is a far cry from life as a freshly graduated midwife working at a hospital run by Dominican nuns in Davao in 1986. Back then, she didn’t know a thing about unions. Today, she is as much concerned with workplace safety as with her co-workers’ awareness of their rights. Proudly, she recounts how a worker responded to a taunt that went: “So what have you gained from wearing all those buttons and rallying? Those who did over-time would thank you because they earned a lot of money! You, what did you get?” The worker replied simply: “Respect.”

At the Delta Chelsea, Eula says, renovations made two years ago have created more, and larger, rooms. Additionally, from the 19th down to the 4th floor, the beds have new and very thick mattresses which come up to the workers’ waists. This has made their work a war with the beds – a war where they are always the casualties. Eula is one of those who have been injured, trying to lift the mattresses in order to change the linen.

Workload is a long-standing issue common to hotel workers all over North America. Fifteen years ago, Eula had to skip afternoon breaks and work three or four hours beyond 4:30 p.m. to comply with the 16-room quota. Today, the quantity of work has increased five times over, she says, because of heavier mattresses, duvets, extra sheets and more pillows. The added workload, coupled by the unchanged room quota, she says, makes the hotel room a very dangerous workplace.

The lack of job security, Eula notes, is also a highly important issue, especially because of the power of hotels to subcontract out labour. In many cases, the work of whole departments, such as the food department, has been subcontracted out. Eula observes: “What management really wants is unlimited subcontracting.”

On November 10, International Hotel Workers’ Day, Eula and her co-workers will make public their workplace issues with a rally from 4:30 to 6 p.m. and a 6-8 p.m. forum at the Library Building at 350 Victoria Street in downtown Toronto.

Note: *The founders of UNITE HERE are UNITE, formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, and HERE, Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union.