Chicago: UNITE HERE Local 1 Avoids Strike
Stephanie Corbin -- Tradeshow Week, 4/9/2007
Despite some rancor and a new framework for negotiations, all seems to be peaceful in the relationship between Chicago hotels and their employees — for at least the next three years.
The main difference in the recent contract talks was the framework establishing who negotiated with whom.
"We would usually negotiate as an umbrella," said Arnie Karr, chief operating officer of the Chicago Hotel Employers Labor Relations Assn., a consortium of 26 hotels in the Chicago area that typically band together for union negotiations.
This time, "it was totally different," said Karr, the veteran of eight contract negotiations with hotel workers over the last 40 years.
Hilton, Hyatt and Starwood all negotiated separate contracts with UNITE HERE Local 1 last year. Karr negotiated a single contract with the union for 12 hotels, and 11 more had "me too" contracts, meaning they agreed to comply with whatever the negotiating hotels committed to. The previous contract expired Aug. 31
About 90 percent of workers at Hilton and Hyatt had voted to strike before the previous contract expired. Hilton reached a tentative agreement just before the deadline. Hyatt agreed to extend its existing contract, coming to an agreement on a new one only a few days later, over the Labor Day weekend. Starwood did the same in mid-September.
Robert Allegrini, regional director of corporate communications for Hilton, declined the opportunity to comment.
Karr said the language was a little different on all the contracts, but the basic economic package was consistent: Non-tipped employees received $1.10 hourly raises in the first year of the three-year contract and $1.40 over the final two years.
Seven months later, said Lars Negstad, Local 1 research director, everything seems to be working well.
"What we said on the conclusion of the settlement basically stands," Negstad said. At the time, the union released a statement indicating it was pleased with the outcome.
To the same question, Karr answered, "It always takes time to adjust to a new contract ... There haven't been any major disruptions. We're in that learning-curve stage, and we're rapidly learning what both parties have to do to abide by the contract."
Karr cited new language about immigration, workloads and diversity in the contract as some of the issues that had changed. Previous contracts also lasted longer than this one will. Negstad said there was a need for vigilance with new contracts, and some details were still being worked out.
The hotels had agreed to more of a wage increase than they wanted, Karr added, but avoided a labor disruption.
"Any time we have a contract negotiation, you never know which way it's going to go," he said. "We didn't have a strike, so we saw that as a benefit."
Negstand echoed the sentiment. "It's always great to reach a settlement without a public dispute," he said.
