Media Advisory: BREAKING! Three downtown Vancouver hotels – Hyatt Regency, Westin Bayshore, Pinnacle Harbourfront – launch indefinite strike over need for safe and stable work
This morning, hundreds of hotel workers from the Hyatt Regency, Westin Bayshore and Pinnacle Harbourfront hotels, represented by UNITE HERE Local 40, walked off the job in an open-ended strike. This escalation in the dispute follows a lunch hour strike held on Tuesday. After fourteen months of bargaining the hotels have failed to address significant outstanding issues related to workload, safety and job security. Room attendants, chefs, front desk agents and other staff of the high-end hotels are holding downtown strike actions for the first time in nearly two decades, united in their fight to change the industry into one which offers safe, stable and sustainable jobs.
The workers are demanding “One job should be enough!” in Vancouver’s booming hospitality industry which makes record profits year after year, while the cost of living continues to rise in Metro Vancouver. Many of the city’s hotel workers are struggling to provide for their families with precarious, on-call shifts caused by the systemic cutting of hours in these hotels. Safety remains a priority in this dispute, as many workers have stepped forward with complaints of sexual harassment faced on the job, and extreme under-staffing has led to unsafe and unsustainable workload levels. Vancouver’s downtown hotel workers stand together for better quality jobs and an improved quality of life.
Picket Actions
Date: Thursday, Sept 19, 2019
Time: 7:00 AM
Where: Hyatt Regency, Westin Bayshore, Pinnacle Harbourfront hotels
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Contact: Sharan Pawa, 604-725-0053, [email protected]
Yesterday, Pinnacle Harbourfront hotel became the latest downtown hotel to join Hotel Georgia, Hyatt and Westin in issuing strike notice. Workers at these prominent Vancouver hotels, represented by UNITE HERE Local 40, have been without a collective agreement for up to 14 months and are prepared to strike in order to achieve better working conditions. Workers at the Hotel Georgia, Canada’s top-rated hotel, still face a lockout threat imposed by hotel management.
As of 10:00am on Monday, September 9th, UNITE HERE Local 40 hotel members issued 72-hour strike notice at the Hyatt Regency hotel; this means picket lines could go up as soon as Thursday morning. Workers at the Hotel Georgia issued their strike notice earlier this month, and could strike at any time. Hotel workers from the Westin Bayshore, Pinnacle and Four Seasons hotels are also part of the downtown hotel bargaining. Nearly 1,500 hotel workers and their families in the Metro Vancouver area are affected by current negotiations with the five hotels.
