BY JOHN SARGE
CHATHAM, Ontario - A sign declaring "Hey Bradley, Lets
Talk" adorns the top of an eight-foot-high mound of snow
outside the Best Western, Wheels Inn, Resort and Conference
Center here. The hotel is owned by the Bradley family. Signs
with similar messages and others proclaiming "CAW on Strike"
dot the snow walls along the road between picket lines at the
three entrances to the hotel complex. Striking hotel workers
are staffing these lines 24 hours a day, seven days a week,
including during the worst snow storm in years.
On Nov. 25, 1998, 450 workers, many of them young, went on strike to win their first contract here. They are members of Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 127. The amalgamated local represents workers at 21 work sites in the area, including the Navistar Truck Assembly Plant across the road from the hotel.
Jerry Willan, the strike chairman, explained the workers moved quickly once they decided they wanted a union. "We started to organize last February [1998]. In May we won certification with a 65 percent vote for the union. Only 13 people voted against strike action when we voted in October," Willan said. He also reported that only 13 union members have crossed the picket lines in the seven weeks since the strike began.
A leaflet the union produced explains, "Our main goal is to improve working conditions and end favouritism." The strike is currently focused on economics. Robert Jenner, national representative for the CAW, told the media an agreement was reached on noneconomic issues before Christmas. But on December 27 the picket line swelled after a meeting where strikers rejected an offer of a 60-cent raise over three years.
Strikers explain that wages at the hotel are terrible. One waitress on the picket line, who asked that her name not be used, said, "After 20 years at the hotel I earn Can$7 [Can$1=US$0.65]. I get tips if we have customers, but you can't live on it."
Andrew Binga, a bartender who has worked here seven years part-time while attending school, said, "I make $7.20 an hour and don't get any benefits. If you're full-time you get some benefits, but not part-time workers."
Jean Janssens, who was staffing the strike office, said, "after over five years in reservations I make $8.60 an hour. It takes seven years to reach top pay of $9.10 an hour." According to CAW Local 127 president Charlie Formosa, the minimum wage in Canada is $6.85, or $6.65 for students.
Strikers report active support for their strike in the area. CAW members from Navistar have joined the picket lines. Reservations worker Janssens said, "Every Christmas banquet scheduled from Chatham was canceled."
Willan added that United Parcel Service drivers were refusing to cross the picket lines.
The hotel bosses are paying scabs $11 to do the jobs strikers did for $7 or $8. They have brought in private security cops to harass strikers. Nicole Demers, a striker staffing the Keil Drive entrance, described how the strikebreaking guards have gone so far as to "pour urine on our fire wood" at the gate. Management also sent out a letter days before Christmas offering a $200 bonus to any full-time worker and $100 to part-time workers who would cross the picket line for the two weeks around the holidays, even if they rejoined the strike in January. Strikers report that no one fell for the offer.
The local cops have also done their part to harass the strikers. Pickets report that 24 people have been arrested on the lines. Five were arrested December 30 when 75 strikers showed up at the main entrance. Those five are facing mischief charges and one 19-year-old man was charged with assaulting a police officer. Janssens, the first striker to be arrested, described her experience. "I was struck by a car that was crossing the picket line." She went on, "I fell. The driver then drove over my foot. I was helped up, and a police officer asked if I wanted to go home. I replied, `No!' Two police officers then picked me up and slammed me on the hood of the police car. They handcuffed me so tight that I have bruises on my hands. I was taken downtown, stripped searched, and thrown in a cell for one and a half hours." She was charged with "causing a disturbance for impeding traffic."
Unionists say the strike may last awhile because neither the hotel nor Best Western's international reservation system are informing people that the workers are on strike. Many of the guests at the resort, which is not far from Detroit, come from the United States as a winter escape.
Jerry Willan estimated that 75 percent of the hotel's business comes from the United States, and if reservations aren't canceled early enough people end up paying for the rooms ordered, even if they honor the picket lines.
CAW Local 127 has begun outreach to others in the labor movement, Formosa said. United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 900 at the Ford complex in Wayne, Michigan, has begun publicizing the boycott of the hotel. The Detroit Sunday Journal, published by locked-out Detroit newspaper workers, is urging people to boycott the Wheels Inn.
Formosa also reported that a letter is going out to all CAW locals in Ontario urging them to come to Chatham on January 23 to show their support at a rally for the striking hotel workers.
John Sarge is a member of UAW Local 900. Marty Ressler and Bill Schmitt contributed to this article.