It is finally this Thursday that the national strike day takes place in more than twenty Quebec hotels whose employees are unionized with the CSN.
In total, some 2,600 employees from 23 hotels are participating in this one-day walkout. The CSN has some 3,500 members in some thirty hotels, but only those in the 23 hotels that are walking out are at the stage where the law allows them to exercise their right to strike.
The affected hotels are located in Greater Montreal, the Quebec City region and the Sherbrooke region.
On July 28, a thousand of them working at the prestigious Queen Elizabeth, Marriott Château Champlain and Bonaventure hotels in Montreal launched a surprise 24-hour strike, to which two of the three establishments responded with a lockout until the following morning.
This was the third walkout by the 11th.e coordinated round of negotiations of the CSN hotel industry, whose representatives promised a joint walkout of all hotels having obtained the right to strike “sometime at the beginning of August”.
Then, last Thursday, the 1er In August, a fourth surprise strike was called by some 400 other workers at the Gouverneur Place Dupuis and Hilton DoubleTree hotels, also in Montreal, who also took to the streets, placards in hand.
The workers are asking for a 36% wage increase over four years. Their union argues that they have had increases totaling 8% over the past four years, well below inflation, which exceeded that rate in 2022 alone.
They are also demanding three weeks of vacation from the first year of service, to attract new workers, an employer contribution to the group insurance plan and better supervision of training for the next generation.