Hotel strike in Vancouver spreads
BY BEVERLY BERNARDO
VANCOUVER--Music blared and motorists honked their support in response to the signs of striking hotel workers at the Quality Hotel on Howe Street at the entrance to the Granville Street Bridge--one of Vancouver's main traffic arteries. The members of Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) Local 3000 walked off the job on July 18. Within days unionists at four more hotels organized by the CAW were also on strike. The unionists are seeking a 12 percent wage increase over three years.
The Hospitality Industrial Relations, the bargaining agent for the bosses at the Ramada Vancouver Center, Parkhill, Quality Downtown Hotel, Coast Whistler, Pacific Palisades, and Courtenay Hotel on Vancouver Island have offered only 5 percent over three years.
The escalating strikes have put 3,700 hotel rooms behind picket lines at the height of British Columbia's busy tourist season. More than 2,500 workers at 12 hotels are now on strike.
About 2,200 unionists at seven of Vancouver's largest hotels walked off the job July 3 and 4, prompting their officials in the Hotel, Restaurant and Culinary Employees and Bartenders Union (HRCEBU) Local 40 to call an official strike. The workers struck after rejecting by 97 percent a company offer of no wage increase the first year and 1 percent raises the second and third years. Local 40 members are fighting for 3 percent annual wage increases over four years.
Seventy-one percent of the strikers rejected a second offer July 12 from the Greater Vancouver Hotel Employers Association, which represents bosses at the Hyatt Regency, Four Seasons, Westin Bayshore, Renaissance, Holiday Inn, the Delta Pacific resort, and Delta Vancouver Airport Hotel. The workers clearly decided that the 2 percent annual wage increases in a four-year contract were not acceptable.
Some Filipino workers at the Westin Bayshore indicated their intention to vote no on the offer by making a pun. "We're Filipin No's," one of them told the Militant. A majority of the workers are immigrants hailing from countries around the world.
The employers have responded to the workers' determined stance by seeking to limit the effectiveness of the strike. On July 13 unionists confronted scabs hired by the Hyatt Regency as they unloaded baggage with the aid of Paladin Security guards. The hotel bosses have increased their use of private cops to intimidate strikers.
A week later the British Columbia Supreme Court granted the Westin Bayshore and Four Seasons injunctions limiting the number of Local 40 pickets to four at each entrance. The Renaissance Hotel is seeking a similar injunction. In addition, SERCA Food Services has obtained an injunction preventing workers from blocking the company's deliveries to the Hyatt Regency.
Despite these antiunion moves, some 460 members of CAW Local 4275 at the Hotel Vancouver voted 74 percent for a strike mandate. Their contract expires July 31.
Beverly Bernardo is a meat packer in Vancouver.
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