CHICAGO — Members of UNITE HERE Local 1 are continuing their fight for a contract at dozens of downtown hotels here. Workers at six of the largest hotels struck for five days Oct. 9-13, when the bosses had looked forward to lots of profitable bookings on the weekend of the Chicago Marathon.
Workers at the Hyatt Regency Chicago and Chicago Hilton began a five-day work stoppage Oct. 18, and union members at other hotels have been joining the picket lines, as well as holding informational pickets at their own workplaces. Overall, 7,000 workers at more than 40 hotels have been without a contract since Sept. 1.
At the lively, noisy picket line outside the Hilton Oct. 18, several workers told Militant correspondents what they’re fighting for. “The hotels are putting out misleading information,” Kristy Babiarz, a server at Kitty O’Sheas pub inside the hotel, said. “They say they will pay us an increase of $7.05 an hour over the next five years. But that includes adding together healthcare, pensions and wages. The actual wage increase comes out to be 64 cents for the first year, or 37 cents for tipped workers like me. That’s an insult! That doesn’t even make up for inflation.
“And this is while the CEOs are making record profits,” she noted. “They say they will only raise one — either our wages or our healthcare benefits. We need both!”
“We work very hard. The hotel gets guests to opt out of daily cleaning, then gives us more checkouts to work,” which take more time, said Christianell Mitchell, who has worked at the Hilton in housekeeping for seven years. They don’t put enough people on the schedule, “and then we come to work and find out there’s mandatory overtime. But I have to go pick up my child!”
Going on strike “shows we’re serious about getting what we deserve,” Mitchell said.
Zeruiah Eason, a housekeeper from the Palmer House, where workers struck the previous week, came by to offer her support. “We’re still fired up about the strike,” she said. “We’re optimistic we’re going to win this fight.” She said for her, one of the central questions is the pension. “I don’t want to have to work when I retire. I want to be able to relax.”
When this Militant correspondent visited the Palmer House picket line Oct. 13, Pearline Wilson said housekeepers there “have to do 16 doors a day. Just about all the other downtown hotels are 15 or less.
“We have to clean up after people and their pets,” she said, and housekeepers only get an extra $10 for cleaning a “pet room,” even though the hotel charges guests a lot more than that to bring their cats and dogs.
Like several other workers we spoke to, Wilson was interested to learn about the BP oil refinery workers’ fight against the company lockout in nearby Whiting, Indiana. She lives in that area, “and I ride past the picket line all the time,” she said. “I didn’t know they’d been locked out six months already. Now that I know more, I’ll stop and bring them some support.”
To send a message of solidarity to the hotel workers’ fight, or to get information on joining a picket line, contact UNITE HERE Local 1, 218 S. Wabash Ave., 7th Floor, Chicago, IL 60604.