Newsday (New York), January 17, 2006, Tuesday

Newsday

Will vital hotels union be next to strike?
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-amhotel0117,0,3425539,print.story?coll=nyc-topheadlines-left

BY CHUCK BENNETT
amNEW YORK STAFF WRITER

January 17, 2006

Strike talk is in the air again. This time, it's not mass transit that's at stake, but the city's vital hotel industry.

The New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, an umbrella group representing 28,000 workers in six unions, is threatening to walk out this summer.

And with 41 million visitors to the city spending more than $21 billion last year, any disruption to hotel services would be a big blow to the economy.

"This is the most important contract negotiation in history for a variety of reasons: protecting pensions, resisting givebacks and preventing management from willful and repeated abuses of the contract," said John Turchiano, a trades council spokesman.

The union's five-year contract with 150 hotels and motels in the city expires July 1.Vijay Dandapani, chairman of the Hotel Association of New York City, which represents the management of more than 200 hotels, acknowledged tough negotiations ahead.

"We don't know what will come to pass or whether there will be a strike or not," he said.

The union proved last year that it can get results.

Through protests and a well-managed media campaign, hotel workers were instrumental in forcing Elad Properties to scale back plans to convert the Plaza Hotel into condominiums -- saving 350 union jobs slated to be cut.

The brewing hotel labor dispute is part of a nationwide campaign to win better contracts for hotel workers.

Contracts in Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Honolulu, Sacramento, Cincinnati, Detroit and Sacramento expire this year.

"New York is not operating in isolation," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. "It is a national strategy."

Locally, the Hotel Trades Council has much in common with the Transport Workers Union Local 100, which called last month's three-day transit strike.

The transit union negotiated its contract with the MTA while the agency was flush with a $1 billion surplus.

Likewise, the hotel industry is reporting profits not seen since 2000. Daily occupancy ended the year over 80%, and the average nightly room rate was $240 -- totaling about $9.5 million a day.Both unions want to protect pensions.

Both want raises. And both accuse management of unfair treatment.


But unlike transit workers, who are state employees and forbidden by law to strike, hotel employees are free to walk off the job.

Hotel workers say they are not afraid to walk out. The last New York City hotel strike, in 1985, lasted 27 days.

"This is a union that knows how to prepare a strike and knows how to win," Bronfenbrenner said.

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