It is growing clearer each day that labor unrest in the hotel industry could explode this year into a conflict that threatens the well-being of meetings in several of North America's most important destinations.
Unite Here, the powerful hotel employees union, signaled in February a raising of the stakes by launching a campaign to hand out leaflets with union information outside more than 100 non-union Hilton and Starwood hotels in 60 cities.
The next negotiating battleground appears to be New York City, where Unite Here's contract is set to expire June 30. There could be a repeat of the intermittent picketing and loud rhetoric that have played out over the past two years in Los Angeles and San Francisco; the labor issues have yet to be resolved in either of those cities.
The New York Hotel Trades Council, the city's Unite Here local, said it is preparing for a strike if its needs aren't met by the time the contract runs out.
In addition to New York, labor contracts are scheduled to expire this year in Boston, Chicago and Hawaii, as well as Los Angeles, where a one-year contract was signed last year. A contract covering 23 hotels in Toronto expired on Jan. 31, and negotiations were ongoing at MeetingNews press time. Employees at affected San Francisco hotels are currently working without a contract.
In New York, negotiations between the union and hotels are expected to begin soon. While both sides say they hope to avoid a strike, both intend to be prepared for the worst as well.
"I have told my management team to dust off their chef's hats," said Matt Hart, president and COO of Hilton Hotels Corp.
The New York local has already organized into teams, or heats, complete with heat leaders, maps, instructions and instant communication capabilities. The local has a $28 million strike war chest.
Heat leaders, 2,700 of them, took a day off work to meet at the Manhattan Center on March 9, wearing green hats that read "7-1-06." They discussed plans for a possible strike on that date and heard motivational speeches from local and national Unite Here officials.
"We're organizing ourselves to fight management. They like to take away our rights of getting benefits as workers," said Raphael Torres, a 31-year union member and 16-year employee at the New York Hilton. "Nobody wins in a strike, but if we need to go, there's no way we're going to step back. We're going to give a hell of a fight to management."
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