Workers
Demand Job Security in the Midst of Pandemic Actions Across Canada by Hospitality Workers -
Brian Sproule -  UNITE HERE Local 75
picket in Toronto, September
22, 2020
.
Hospitality workers in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa
organized actions on October 22 in support of their demands for
protection of their jobs. A joint press release of UNITE HERE Local 40
in BC and Local 75, representing workers in Toronto, issued
on the day of the actions, states: "UNITE HERE! Canada is urging the
government to condition targeted sectoral bailouts on employers' full
participation in the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) to cover
their active and furloughed workers; assurances that laid-off workers
have a right to return to their jobs for up to 24 months; and worker
retention to secure the jobs of contracted workers in Canada's
airports. Few hospitality employers are using CEWS to cover furloughed
workers as the program was intended. Without protections, most laid-off
workers will not have a right to return to their jobs once the industry
recovers."  The Toronto
action was held outside the
Marriot Hotel
and the Ottawa action was at the Ottawa Marriott and online. The
targets were hotels owned by
InnVest, Canada's largest hotel owner. InnVest CEO Lydia Chen sits on
the board of the Hotel Association of Canada which is lobbying for
bailout relief alongside airline and airport industry associations. The
federal
government has promised relief for the airline and tourism industries
and it is well-known that industry representatives have been lobbying
and have the ear of government. The workers, without whom neither
industry can function, the actual producers of the added value that
enriches the private owners, have no forum but the streets to raise
their
demands and be heard. BC workers who were peacefully demonstrating on
the lawn of the legislature were prohibited from even entering the
legislature to sit in the visitor's gallery, much less granted a
meeting with any of the MLAs they tried to talk to.
The
Vancouver action outside the Hyatt Regency hotel, also an InnVest
hotel, involved about 100 workers and their supporters. A union
activist told Workers' Forum that only about 10
per cent
of workers in
the hospitality sector, most of them employed in hotels and
restaurants, are currently working. Some workers report having been
recalled for short periods and that most employers are not using the
federal government's CEWS program to keep them on the payroll. Many
have been permanently laid off in all three cities. Workers in
Vancouver won improvements in wages and working conditions in a strike
in 2019 and employers are using the pandemic as a cover to violate
those gains, forcing workers to accept lower wages and inferior
conditions in order to be recalled.  In
British Columbia the workers have kept up a steady pressure on the
provincial government to extend the provisions of the labour laws to
address the extraordinary circumstances caused by the pandemic and
extend the time period during which a worker maintains their right to
recall to their former job. Labour Minister Harry Bains
announced on September 1 that the BC government's recovery package
would contain "a pledge for employers to offer a right of first refusal
to existing employees when work resumes," i.e. an option for employers
to "do the right thing." To date the NDP government has refused to take
up its social responsibility to protect these workers' jobs and
the jobs of other BC workers in similar circumstances through
guaranteeing recall rights. In Ontario a number of actions have been
organized to demand that employers guarantee that laid off workers can
return to their jobs as the industry re-starts.
The
issue is this: in whose interests and on whose terms
will the deals be struck between industry and the federal government?
The hospitality workers assert that the government has a social
responsibility to recognize that they have rights. No one is fooled
that they should sit back and hope that employers "do the right thing,"
especially when
employers have been using the pandemic to get rid of large numbers of
workers altogether and blackmail others. The federal government must
ensure that there are no deals without protection of the rights of the
workers to go back to their jobs with the terms and conditions that
existed when they were laid off.
 
Hospitality
workers actions, October 22, 2020, clockwise from top left: Vancouver,
Toronto, Ottawa
This article was published in
Number 73 - October 27, 2020
Article Link:
Workers
Demand Job Security in the Midst of Pandemic: Actions Across Canada by Hospitality Workers -
Brian Sproule
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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