National strike day | Hospitality industry workers are ‘fed up’

Union members from about twenty hotels in Quebec took part in a first national day of strike action on Thursday, in the middle of the summer tourist season. In Montreal, they gathered by the hundreds to denounce their working conditions, which no longer allow them to keep up with inflation.

“Inflation is for everyone”: on Thursday, nearly a thousand hotel employees unionized with the CSN chanted this phrase vigorously at the Place des Festivals in Montreal, brandishing signs and flags.

“It doesn’t make sense. The price of rooms has tripled, but our salary hasn’t increased,” lamented Ghada Ali, a laundry attendant at the Holiday Inn in Laval.

This 24-hour strike mobilized some 2,600 employees from 23 hotels in Montreal, Quebec City and Sherbrooke. This is the fourth walkout of the 11^e coordinated round of negotiations of the CSN hotel industry, which involves a total of 30 hotels in Quebec.

The unions are demanding, in particular, salary increases of 36% over 4 years. A demand that Michel Valiquette, head of the hotel sector and treasurer of the Fédération du commerce-CSN, considers justified.

“These workers have become poorer in recent years. They have benefited their employers, who have taken advantage of this to enrich themselves after the pandemic,” he said at a press briefing. He was accompanied by Yvan Duceppe, treasurer of the CSN, and Chantal Ide, vice-president of the Conseil central du Montréal métropolitain-CSN.

While negotiations have been ongoing since April, Mr. Valiquette explains that they have now reached an impasse regarding financial demands.

However, according to Éric Hamel, interim president and CEO of the Greater Montreal Hotel Association (GMHA), salary increases over the past eight years have “amply” covered inflation. “When you look at the seven primarily financial demands, it’s definitely unrealistic,” he said in an interview with The Press.

According to M^me Ali and his colleagues say the increase in room prices also causes additional work and a lot of physical pain.

“Instead of staying two nights, [les visiteurs] “They’re only going to stay one night because it’s too expensive. So we have to prepare twice as many rooms as before,” explained Marie-Thérèse Alexandre, room attendant and president of the union at the Holiday Inn in Laval.

Disruptions in hotels

On Thursday morning, two Montreal hotels not far from Place de Festivals were visited by strikers for about thirty minutes: a situation that the AHGM deplores.

” [Les clients] are being held hostage there,” said Eric Hamel.

He assures that even if some services are reduced, their quality is not left to chance. “For example, housekeeping. Well, if you are there for more than one day, it is possible that the hotelier will not do the cleaning that would normally have been done every day,” he mentions.

The Queen Elizabeth Hotel, which usually offers a bar, café, market, restaurant and room service, has limited its food offering to one unit for the day. At the Ritz-Carlton, it is impossible to reach the management staff, who are “on the floor,” the reception said. Nevertheless, the service is proceeding as planned, even if it is more limited.

“We prepared a lot of things in advance in the kitchen,” said Oleg Troufanov, an employee of the Ritz-Carlton kitchens, who was present at the Place des Festivals on Thursday.

“I’m a little apprehensive about tomorrow,” said Josée Latulippe, a room service employee at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The employee estimates that the hotel’s current occupancy rate is at least 90%.

Goals, at all costs

At the foot of the stairs of the Place des Festivals, a banker and his life-size Monopoly game kept the strikers busy during the day.

“There’s a box where you have to pay your taxes. A box to pay your hydro bill. But there’s also a box where you can negotiate your terms,” explains Julien St-Germain-Ian, in the role of the banker. The goal? “To complete a full turn of the board… without running out of money, like workers with their pay,” imagines the CSN manager.

Among the demands, the unions are calling for increased vacation and insurance benefits, as well as an end to the use of employment agencies.

Michel Valiquette indicated during the press briefing that the triggering of unlimited general strikes was not excluded, once the 120-hour strike mandate has expired.

With the collaboration of Stéphanie Bérubé, The Press