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NEWS & LETTERS, October 2004New hotel
labor struggles
Chicago--We
have been on strike at the Congress Hotel since August of 2003, and are still
maintaining a picket line into the second year. The owners still will not match
wages and conditions of the contract that workers in UNITE HERE at other Chicago
hotels work under. The
owners are keeping the hotel open but understaffed with scabs who are themselves
underpaid. This once was a great hotel where presidents would stay, but not
anymore. Most owners, no matter how much they are pushing for profits, pour a
regular portion of revenues back into the building to maintain it. With this
ownership, whatever money comes in goes straight into their pockets, and the
hotel goes downhill. There
was a rumor that the Congress Hotel was on the market. It must have been a
bargaining ploy, because we have seen no change. Obviously, any new owners
couldn’t be worse. We
are paying attention to the situation in Atlantic City, where UNITE HERE workers
at most of the hotel-casinos went on strike last week. On the West Coast, UNITE
HERE workers in San Francisco who have been working without a contract began a
limited two-week strike at four hotels. They had been holding out not only on
wages and benefits, but for a two-year contract that would expire at the same
time as contracts in Chicago, New York and Boston. We
had heard they expected that the limited strike might turn into something more
if the owners reacted, and they did: the owners expanded the battle by locking
out workers at ten other hotels. Other
workers and supporters have extended solidarity to us and our picket line. Now
that we have company on the streets, with picket lines on both coasts, we
support them. --Congress
Hotel strikers *
* * New
York--Five Latina maids--the youngest a teenager--are suing New York’s
Broadway Plaza Hotel charging sexual harassment, discrimination, wage abuses and
forced labor. They are among the first to bring a forced labor charge since the
Trafficking Victims and Protection Act was amended in December 2003 to allow
individuals to bring such charges in civil court. Immigrant women in low-wage jobs are most vulnerable to such labor abuse, said Lenora M. Lapida, director of the women’s rights project at the American Civil Liberties Union. Women make up close to 60% of the 1.4 million hotel workers, with nearly 25% Hispanic. Yet Latinas earn the least and are least likely to be in a union. |
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