Labor Update: All Quiet on the Hotel Front

This time last year tradeshow organizers and meeting planners, who have enough to worry about as it is, were also bracing for what they thought could have been massive disruptions to their events caused by work stoppages at hotels. The hotel workers union UNITE HERE had contracts with hotels that were due to expire in six major cities.

It appeared to be the culmination of a national strategy that had been years in the making. In 2004 and 2005, unions in as many cities as possible negotiated contracts shorter than the usual three years, hoping to give themselves a little more negotiating power as multiple agreements expired at close to the same time in 2006.

In the end, hotels in all six cities did reach separate agreements with UNITE HERE, and the threat of nationwide disruptions to the meetings and tradeshow business never materialized.

"It didn't work, because they didn't strike us," said Joseph McInerney, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Assn.

Indeed, hotels and unions signed contracts in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto and Honolulu. The contract with hotel workers in Boston recently expired, and negotiations were still underway at press time. (For more on the situation in Boston, see the story on p. 6)

At this point, union spokespeople were even reluctant to label their Hotel Workers Rising campaign a strategy.

"I'm dubious about questions on national strategy," said UNITE HERE Press Secretary Amanda Cooper. "It doesn't really help anybody."

Neal Kwatra, interim executive director of Inmex, a union program created to interact with meeting planners said, "I wouldn't categorize it as a national strategy. It's more of a commitment to create good jobs for the families who work in this industry."

McInerney, however, was happy to use the label.

"It is a national strategy," he said, "but it only takes effect when they're under negotiation."

McInerney said the next time that many contracts will expire in the same year will be 2012, "and it's not going to happen on my watch."

What then can show organizers and meeting planners expect in the near future regarding hotel labor issues?

Although union leaders are rallying their members, they and hotel officials have begun preliminary discussions in both Las Vegas and Washington, D.C., major cities in which hotel union contracts expire this year. While it is too early to predict much, it does not appear likely that either will attract the interest potential work stoppages did in 2006.

McInerney said of any strike talk, "With all this, they're speaking to their members, not to anybody else. They want to show they're trying to rattle our cages."

Union leaders themselves also seem to be preparing for life to go on as it is. One thing they've done is create Inmex, or the Informed Meeting Exchange, and launch a Web site for the program at www.inmex.org. Inmex is meant to recruit subscribers, many of them associations aligned with the union and interested in supporting it.

Kwatra said meeting planners and show organizers could contact Inmex for "information and education about where the cities and companies are that are working with our workers."

He said the union had countless planners and organizers calling it for help or advice during last year's negotiations in different cities, wanting to know how, and if, work disruptions would affect their events. The program, begun in June 2006, he said, "is a process. We're still in the organizing stage."

Eventually, Kwatra added, it will be a clearinghouse for planners and event organizers who want to do business in cities and with companies that are labor-friendly. Although Kwatra said the group has had discussions with a number of convention and visitors bureaus — including those in Los Angeles and Detroit — only one, the San Jose Convention & Visitors Bureau, is listed on the group's Web site as a member.

In fact, the site's home page carries a testimonial by Dan Fenton, president of the San Jose CVB.

"We're proud of our relationship with labor, and we want to talk about it openly," Fenton told Tradeshow Week. "The idea of trying to keep meeting planners aware is a good one, and we think there's nothing unhealthy about that."

The CVB and convention center in San Jose are operated by an entity called Team San Jose, whose board members include labor leaders.

Kwatra said the associations that have become members of Inmex spend about $500 million each year on meetings, conventions and tradeshows.

"This way, they can spend their meeting and convention dollars with companies in cities that are working in collaboration with our workers," he said.

McInerney said the most serious issue the hotel industry has with the unions now is no longer contract discussions, but that of card check neutrality. As UNITE HERE works to organize more employees in more hotels, it is lobbying the U.S. Congress — in conjunction with other labor unions — to allow workers to check off on a card their desire to belong to a union rather than vote by secret ballot.

McInerney asked rhetorically, "When we select a president of the United States we do it by secret ballot, but that's not good enough for the unions?"

Cooper said many workers at non-union hotels are intimidated not only by elections to ask for union representation, but also by the tactics of hotel owners who work to discourage it.

"Organizing workers is a very dubious business," she said. "They get challenged; they even get fired."

McInerney was also quick to point out that hotels and unions are not always adversaries. In fact, at the moment, he said, they are working together to lobby the U.S. Congress on immigration reform.

"One day, you're arguing with them about card check neutrality," McInerney said. "The next day we're headed up to Capitol Hill to talk about immigration."