Standing with union hotel workers

By Jasmine Marwaha

The tourism industry is rapidly recovering from the Great Recession. Hotels in particular are set to make record profits in 2012. Like all corporations, they protected profits during the recession by cutting back on the workforce and making their employees do more in less time.

UNITE HERE Local 8, a union representing hotel, food service and restaurant workers in Washington State, will work with local labor and community groups to demand that corporations share in the sacrifice that working families have already made – and that the workers share in the recovery already being enjoyed by their employers.

Local 8 invites PSARA and other community groups to participate in the UNITE HERE “Right to Recovery” campaign. The union contracts covering more than 1,400 workers at six hotels and the Space Needle will expire this summer. We need to work as a community to ensure that workers are not left in the dust as hotels claim record profits.

In addition, this campaign will launch the union’s drive to organize the entire hotel industry, an achievement that would ensure a better life for thousands more workers.

Union jobs in the hospitality industry already provide a path to the middle class for thousands. Thanks to the union, Local 8 members have been able to support their kids in college, to survive health issues without going bankrupt, and to retire with dignity.

When the community rallies to support the hospitality workforce, good things happen. In 2006, dozens of community groups helped our members at the Westin Hotel gain increases in wages, benefits and pensions, as well as unprecedented protections for our immigrant members. The Westin victory set the stage for follow-up negotiations at other properties, where we made similar gains.

Now we have a stellar opportunity to expand economic justice for workers in the hotel industry throughout the Greater Seattle area, and in turn to bring economic justice to workers in other industries

Join us at the Seattle Labor Temple at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 21, for our Community Briefing. Learn how you can stand with hospitality workers who are fighting for fair contracts in unionized hotels, and organizing for a better life in non-union workplaces. Together, we can help ensure a recovery that includes quality jobs and that sustains economic growth throughout Western Washington.

(Jasmine Marwaha is a community organizer for UNITE HERE Local 8, and a PSARA member.)