LABOR —— -—____—_--— Toronto hotel for better pay, By MIKE PHILLIPS TORONTO — When 3,500 striking hotel workers sh- out: “‘Overworked and underpaid!’’ as they pound the pavement outside 10 of the city’s fancier hotels, they’re telling it like it is. For all of the weird and crazy hours they put in, the back-breaking work, and the b.s. they have to put up with from management the striking members of Hotel. and Restaurant Employees Union Local 75 get paid slightly more for a week’s work than what it costs to spend the night in one of the struck hotels. While the big corporations who run the hotels reap millions in profits, the people whose work brings in those million to gorge the bank accounts of Sheraton, Ramada, Westin, Plaza, Chelsea Inn, Westbury and the others, - are forced to live on slave wages. The workers — waitresses, waiters, laundry workers, doormen, busmen, porters and all of the other jobs that keep a hotel on the go 24 hours a day — went out April 10. The 10-member Hotel Employers’ Group, represent- ing the struck hotels, refuses to budge from its miserly offer of a three-year pact with wage increases of 8, 7 and 5 per cent for maids and other staff who don’t get tips, ~ 5S per cent annually for the remaining workers who o. The hotel workers’ union is demanding a 30 per cent hike for the non-tipping staff over the three years and 24 per cent for those who get tips. Wages for the non-tipping staff, including chamber maids and laundry workers are about $5.50 an hour on average, while the workers who ‘‘depend on the generos- ity of the public’’, as one waiter put it, are paid around $4.20 an hour without tips. The workers are predominantly recent immigrants, the majority from the Jamaican, Portuguese, Greek, Ita- lian and Filipino communities. The union points out that most are single parents who try to scrape by on less than $150 a week in take home pay. What It’s Like Some, like waiters and waitresses only work 25 hours TRIBUNE PHOTO — MIKE PHILLIPS Striking Hotel Restaurant Employees Union members are calling on the public to boycott the struck hotels and to respect their picket lines. Many customers, including a number of unions have taken their business elsewhere. a week on average, mostly on weekends, and are on call to come in to work at practically any time. Jeanne Windling, 64, a waitress at the Sheraton Centre since it opened 12 years ago, said many people don’t understand what it’s like to only work four days a week and earn $4.20 an hour, before deductions. Windling, the kind of person who still makes the effort to dig into her own meagre resources to find $25 a month to contribute to the United Appeal, — ‘‘you have to do what you can to help others in need’’ — said she had agreed to take fewer hours a week, so the younger wait- resses on the job could make a few more bucks a week. “So what they did in the coffee shop recently is give the girls bigger stations to cover. Each waitress has to cover 22 stations now, but they haven’t hired any extra help”, she said. “‘They want us to handle all that in- crease in work but they don’t want to give us any more money.”’ Pensions are another issue, steward Terry Fralic pointed out. It takes two years’ service before pension credits begin accumulating, he said, and the workers can’t afford to get their own plans. ‘*Youcanend up after 25 years walking out of the place with nothing,’ he said. The hotels’ wage offer, he said, might sound good on paper, ‘‘but 8 per cent on $5.50 or 5 per cent on $4.20 isn’t much against the kind of inflation we have to live in. You don’t necessarily get bigger tips because wages have gone up slightly.”’ A chamber maid, preferring not to identify herself, Quebec steel says no concessions By CLAIRE DaSYLVA MONTREAL — ‘‘Conces- sions made by union members in the United States as a result of the crisis and the threat of closures gained them nothing’, United Steelworkers’ spokesperson Jean-Marc Carle recently told the Tribune’s Quebec sister paper Combat. “On the contrary, that’s why 5,000 North Shore Steelworkers have every intention of negotiat- ing a collective agreement this year without concessions.” Contracts between the union and the five North Shore com- panies (Wabash Mines, Iron Ore Company of Canada, Quebec North Shore and Labrador Rail- way, Quebec Cartier and Sidbec Mines) expired March 1. The companies are demanding con- cessions amounting to about $2.50 an hour from the workers and are seeking to impose agree- ments modelled on the non-union operations like Hamilton’s non- union steel mill Dofasco. Dofasco, in fact belongs to the multi-national Wabush. Already, Quebec Cartier min- ing in Fermont, proposed to freeze wage increases which had already been negotiated. Over 95 per cent of the union members voted the plan down. Carle recalled that in the past North Shore Steelworkers were among the best paid in Canada. Today, they've slipped from that position and are currently earning a dollar an hour less than Steel- workers at Stelco. The 19 Steelworkers locals on the North Shore have set up a co-ordinating committee for the forthcoming set of contract talks. Stability and planning for jobs will be the main orders of the day. Carle explained that the union members have had enough of the way the companies are stepping up production to the maximum just so _they can close the plant gates a few months down the road. There is no excuse for massive shutdowns, due to the crisis that has hit the U.S. steel industry Quebec products are selling well on the American market. Carle pointed out that Steel-, workers’ membership in the U.S. and Canada had plunged from 1.2-million to 700,000 as a result of the economic crisis. In Quebec that number has dropped from 45,000 to 30,000 while member- ship in the union on the North Shore has shrunk from 10,000 to 5,000 members. Job security is therefore a major preoccupation, with ‘Te- tirement after 25 years service, and voluntary severance bonuses, other important bargain- ing demands. Carle added that re- duced work time with mainten- ance of take-home pay will be an- other issue destined to spread among Steelworkers as it will elsewhere. 6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 18, 1984 spoke of the work load and the long hours. ‘‘We havé to clean 16 rooms a day, and big rooms. That’s two beds 0 a room, three sheets, and there’s nothing extra if a TO away bed has been brought in, as sometimes happe”$ + she said. No Breaks There aren’t any breaks, and they have to work eight and-a-half hours a day, because management doesnt pay for their lunch time. ‘‘Don’t forget to mention thos¢ vacuum cleaners we have to carry around with us, they weigh 150 pounds,” she said. Laundry workers also have a special beef. They work midnight to eight a.m., but they get no night sh premium. os Overtime pay is almost non-existent. Workers dont — get any unless they work more than 44 hours a week, OF — more than 12 hours a day. Some get paid for the ovel- time, others get time off in compensation. ae But as one waiter pointed out, if they do get overtime, management will schedule shorter hours the next day 1 balance off the extra wages they paid the day before. The hotel owners have lost no time in trying to brea} the strike, and the union is digging in for the long haul that’s what it will take to bring the owners back'to the table with a reasonable attitude. The owners are already bringing in scabs, but the strikers point out that service can never be the same 11 the hotels without skilled people doing the necessary jobs. ; The grasping attitude of management was reflected 0 one of the bigger houses where an executive assistant manager was seen by the strikers, not only doing a union member’s job but pocketing the tip as well. ; The union says the public in general is responding well to the pickets, a number of guests have checked out and moved to other hotels, taxi drivers at some locations are parking on the street waiting for their fares, rather than crossing the picket lines. At the Sheraton Centre, the strikers were partricularly angry at City Hall officials, who have been allowing scabs from the hotel to unload provisions and supplies 00 municipal property and transporting the goods through underground tunnels from the City Hall parking garage to the hotel. ‘Labor Backs Strikers . Unions and labor organizations have been quick to respond to the strike, withdrawing their business from the struck hotels. The United Auto Workers moved their collective bargaining conference from the Sheraton to the Royal York to protest management’s treatment of the workers. The United Electrical workers, (UE), has also cancelled plans to hold its biennial convention at the Westbury. Other organizations cancelling out or moving planned events from the struck hotels include the Multi- ple Sclerosis Society of Canada, the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, Motion Picture Projectors Union, the University of Toronto’s Centre for Industrial Relations, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union and many others. A planned interview with a visiting representative of the Palestinian Liberation Ortanization, before the lat- ter, unaware of the strike, was scheduled to catch an early morning flight, April 10, was cancelled when Tribune assistant editor Tom Morris refused to cross the hotel union picket.