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Hotel Chains Facing Labor Turmoil

Ex-Veep Candidate John Edwards Organizing Workers

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

February 17, 2006
Hotels hoping to be homes-away-from-home for business and leisure travelers may have a fight on their hands.

Expiring labor contracts in more than a half-dozen major cities this year could cause work slowdowns or stoppages. At best, they won't boost the morale of hotel employees, many of whom have direct dealings with guests.

More than 200 hotels in seven markets are directly involved because of contracts with Unite Here, formed by the merger of a pair of unions two years ago.

San Francisco and Toronto contracts have already expired but mid-June is the date everyone is watching: that's the expiration date on a deal that covers 105 hotels in New York City. Hawaii hotel labor contracts also end that month, with Chicago to follow in August, and both Boston and Los Angeles in November.

The San Francisco situation is already sticky: short-lived strikes and lockouts, mixed with angry rhetoric on both sides, have prevailed between labor and management at the 14 hotels covered by the contract, which ran out in September 2004.

The latest development is the start of a "Hotel Workers Rising" campaign launched in San Francisco this week by actor Danny Glover and former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards.

Wages and benefits are the key issues along with the process used by unions to organize hotel employees. Unite Here wants to poll workers individually but employers prefer secret ballots. The union also wants to deal with the national headquarters of hotel companies rather than individual properties.

Not all hotel companies have equal stakes in the proceedings. Starwood Hotels & Resorts has a higher percentage of employees involved than Marriott, for example.

Should employee wages rise, consumers would almost certainly face comparable price increases. In the meantime, they may experience disruptions of the routines they expect when they travel.

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