Vancouver, BC – Hotel workers from the Hyatt Regency, the Four Seasons, Renaissance Vancouver and the Westin Bayshore showed their determination to move hotel workers into the middle class today by presenting hotel operators with a petition signed by 967 of their co-workers. Recent years have seen the expansion of the hospitality industry and an ever increasing cost of living in Vancouver – but hotel workers’ wages and conditions on the job have not kept up with the times. Hotel housekeepers, who marched in with co-workers from all departments of the hotel, are especially concerned about the increasing workload and resulting pain and injury on the job. Many of the housekeepers are reporting that they work through their breaks to get the job done, and that they are suffering from job-related pain, including numbness and difficulty sleeping at night. Housekeepers and their union, UNITE HERE Local 40, believe that the increased pain is a result of increased workloads that demand as many as 32 beds being changed a day, including changing up to three sheets and nine pillows per bed, heavier mattresses, cumbersome duvets and numerous amenities now being included in every hotel room. Download Fact Sheet here. More than 2,000 hotel workers at the four downtown Vancouver corporate hotels are engaged in the successful “Hotel Workers Rising” campaign that spread across North America last year and sought to improve the conditions for all hotel workers. In cities like Toronto, San Francisco, Honolulu and Chicago, workers embraced the theme of the campaign: “Lifting one another above the poverty line.” For more information, visit the website: www.hotelworkersrising.org. Today’s job action follows on the heels of more than one hundred room attendants attending bargaining sessions last week where they described the impact the heavy workloads and poor working conditions are having upon them to their employers, members of the Greater Vancouver Hotel Employers Association. Union members working at the GVHEA hotels saw their contract expire at the end of June this year. The next round of bargaining is scheduled for mid-August. | 
