August 17, 2007 Workers Cite Keeping Up With the Cost of Living and Increasing Housekeeper Pain as Major Issues Vancouver, BC – After weeks of non-productive negotiations with four major downtown properties, the Hyatt Regency, Renaissance Vancouver Harbourside, the Westin Bayshore Hotel, and the Four Seasons Hotel, UNITE HERE Local 40 hotel worker bargaining committee members decided to authorize a strike vote that will take place on August 29th. The strike vote would cover 1,400 workers at the four downtown hotel properties. The announcement of the strike vote follows 11 negotiation sessions in which the hotels refused to offer any economic proposals that would deal effectively with the issues workers face on a daily basis. Most importantly, hotel workers are concerned with the ever-increasing cost of living for working families in Vancouver. Workers at the four downtown properties are hoping to make hotel industry jobs good middle class jobs that can keep up with the increasing cost of living in Vancouver. As the hotel industry stands to benefit from a boom in tourism, hotel workers are finding it increasing difficult to afford to live in the city where median home prices have exceeded $700,000. “Twenty years ago my rent was one quarter of my monthly wages, now the cost of my rent is more than half of my monthly wages. This makes living in Vancouver increasingly impossible. Given this situation we have no choice but to prepare for a strike, we are fighting for our futures and the future of jobs in our city,” said Beth Marshall, a server at the Hyatt Regency. In recent years, the hospitality industry has become increasingly important to the Vancouver economy. This growth of the hospitality and tourism industry will continue as the Logging industry continues to shrink and the 2010 Winter Olympics draw renewed attention to Vancouver as an international travel destination. Many of the hotels have invested tens of millions of dollars in renovations in anticipation of the upcoming Olympic Games. “These hotel companies invest millions in their hotels, but refuse to invest in us, the workers who make the hotels so profitable. We have come to work in these hotels from different countries all over the world, with a wealth of knowledge and experience. We deserve real respect for the hard work that we do,” said Roberto Luminarias, a 10-year stewarding employee at the Westin Bayshore Hotel. Hotel workers also cited an increase in housekeeper workload and a concurrent increase in housekeeper pain as a growing problem that the hotels have failed to adequately address. “The work we do to clean each room has increased 10 fold in the last 20 years, and so has our pain. We go home with sore backs, swollen wrists and numb fingers. All we ask is that our jobs be safe jobs and that they pay enough so that our families can live in dignity,” said Shanta Prasad, a 30-year housekeeping employee at the Four Seasons. | 
