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First Came COVID. Then Their Hotel Locked Them Out

A four-month battle to save jobs reveals big gaps in BC’s employment laws.

Hiren Mansukhani 12 Aug 2021TheTyee.ca

Hiren Mansukhani is a writer and reporter who is working with The Tyee in partnership with the Tula Foundation. Follow him on Twitter @hirenm1996.

It had been a cloudy summer day in Burnaby, but as evening arrived, the sun cut through the haze over more than 100 hotel workers gathered to fight for their jobs at the Metrotown Hilton hotel.

Liza Secretaria was one of them. For 21 years, she worked at the hotel as a night auditor, helping guests check into their rooms and doing the books.

The pandemic had already snatched away pieces of her life. In December, her brother died of COVID-19, just four months after she had lost her mother-in-law to lung cancer. And while she was mourning, she had to take care of her mother, who was suffering from kidney failure.

On April 15, as Secretaria was preparing for her shift, she got a phone call from her union. The Hilton had locked out Secretaria and more than 70 coworkers.

The workers, members of Unite Here Local 40, were attempting to negotiate a new contract. They had been in a legal strike position since a vote in February. The day before the lockout, they held a one-day strike to protest the permanent layoffs of 97 of their co-workers — most of them women.

But their plan backfired. The next day they were locked out of their workplace. Ever since, Secretaria and her co-workers have been picketing outside the hotel daily for five to six hours.

They’re caught up in a complicated, longstanding dispute that involves COVID-19 and what critics say are B.C. employment laws that fail to protect vulnerable workers.

Non-unionized employees at hotels rely on the Employment Standards Act, which spells out the minimum protection for workers. It says employees laid off for 13 weeks may be owed compensation.

The Hilton union contract extends that to 12 months.

But the pandemic extended layoffs past the deadline, meaning former workers had no right to their jobs. That gave the hotel the chance to replace long-term employees with new hires, the union says.

“We’re not gonna let these hotels get away with pandemic profiteering, no to replacing workers with cheaper hires,” Zailda Chan, president of Unite Here Local 40, told the protest.

The one-day strike on April 14 was an attempt to get the hotel to extend the right-to-recall period to 24 months from the 12 months in the current contract.

When Secretaria realized she was at risk of losing her job, she not only felt shocked but also scared that a part of her identity would be lost. “I met the love of my life here. I celebrated my 50th birthday here,” she said. “I feel I’m next in line to get fired.” Plus, how would she be able to support her family and pay the bills?

But when the workers rallied Aug. 5, instead of displaying fear, her voice struck a defiant tone. She was assertive and hopeful. She was smiling, for she was surrounded by her union members, her friends.

The sound of drums filled the air, and people around them danced. Secrataria returned to her union members. Slowly, the sidewalk outside the Metrotown Hilton filled up. People clad in red and grey T-shirts with pictures of four fired hotel workers greeted each other, beaming. All the while, the security at the hotel stoically stared at the protesters.

After around 10 minutes, Chan took the stage amid a wave of cheers.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said. The union had held the event to protest the lockout and demand the right-to recall term be extended to 24 months for laid-off workers.

“This has dragged on for far too long!” Chan said.

Employment laws and the pandemic

The roots of the dispute stretch back to March 2020 when the pandemic unravelled the tourism industry. Within 48 hours of border closures, the hotel occupancy rate in Canada dropped by 50 per cent. About 50,000 hotel workers in B.C. were laid off in the first month of lockdown. The industry has not yet recovered.

While workers were barely able to pay their bills through employment insurance and other government support programs, they were also worried about their future.

Many had spent decades with the same employer, gaining seniority and enjoying wage increases and benefits such as drug prescriptions, dental and vision care coverage. Those would be lost if their layoffs were permanent and they had to find new jobs.

“If I were to have another job or go to another hotel, I would have to start from scratch,” a protester, who didn’t wish to be named, told The Tyee.

Employees at other hotels also faced job challenges as a result of the pandemic. The Pan Pacific hotel asked some of its permanent employees in July 2020 to become casual on-call workers in exchange for $250. The new designation took away their severance rights. As time passed their hours were cut.

In the light of these events, Unite Here Local 40 staged a rotating 22-day hunger strike last August and called on the provincial government to support worker protection rights.

851px version of UniteLocal40HiltonProtest1.jpg
A protester shouts into a megaphone during the one-day strike. The action was an attempt to get the hotel to extend the right-to-recall period to 24 months from six. Image via Unite Here Local 40.

The strike ended after Labour Minister Harry Bains promised the union that B.C. would “ensure that any government economic recovery package, particularly for the tourism and hotel industry, contains a pledge for employers to offer a right of first refusal to existing employees when work resumes.”

But when B.C. announced $105 million in relief funding for the tourism sector in December, it did not include a promise to protect workers’ jobs.

In January, a hotel worker at the Pan Pacific hotel, with support of the Unite Here Local 40, filed a class-action lawsuit against his employer for allegedly terminating workers without cause or notice.

The proposed lawsuit, still in its early stages, would represent 250 workers, including those who were fired and employed at the time. Unite Here said the lawsuit “could mean workers are owed as much as $3 million.”

In April, the union filed a second class-action lawsuit against the Pan Pacific hotel for allegedly reneging on its promise to indefinitely extend health benefits for its workers in exchange for giving up their right to severance pay.

Around the same time, the Metrotown Hilton hotel workers staged their one-day strike. The company locked out all its workers who were part of the strike, including desk agents and banquet and kitchen staff.

“While we were in negotiations, the employer decided on their own to fire laid-off workers to try to extort a concessionary contract from the longtime staffers. And that led to 97 workers being terminated,” Robert Demand, executive director of Unite Here Local 40, told the Tyee.

The Tyee reached out to the Metrotown Hilton hotel, but the hotel has yet to respond. It is owned by DSDL Co., a Seoul-based company.

Days after the incident, Burnaby city council passed a motion to stop any city spending at the hotel during the labour dispute.

In a press conference, Burnaby Mayor Mike Hurley urged the hotel to "get back to the table, deal with the layoff and recall provision of the contract, extend that until after this pandemic is over and allow these workers the dignity to return to their jobs as they all want to do.”

But Kevin Woolliams, a labour relations consultant with Hospitality Industrial Relations who represents the Metrotown Hilton hotel, told Glacier Media in June the union was the one reluctant to bargain.

“The union has refused to set further bargaining dates with the employer. More than 15 days were offered to the union in May, and the union, as of June 3, has offered no dates in June,” he said.

Michelle Travis, research director for Unite Here Local 40, said that this isn’t true. “We told them we would clear the schedule.”

In the same month, the major public sector unions, including the BC General Employees’ Union, announced they would boycott the hotel until 2022, claiming that could cost the hotel up to $3 million in lost income.

851px version of UniteLocal40HiltonProtest3.jpg
Protesters carry signs reading 'locked out by Hilton' in their solidarity action last April. Image via Unite Here Local 40.

‘Who’s got the power?’

The protest was also attended by representatives of seven public unions, including the BCGEU and the BC Federation of Labour. All the leaders offered their support for the fired hotel workers and reiterated that they would boycott the Metrotown Hilton hotel. Calls of “shame” and "justice” punctuated the speeches.

When the speakers were done, drums played and hundreds of hotel workers and their sympathizers marched along Kingsway Street waving flags and holding signs that said: “Locked out by Hilton.” Infants sat on the shoulders of their caretakers. Others fanned their fellow demonstrators with leaflets being distributed at the march.

The asphalt reverberated with chants and roars. “Who’s got the power?” One group said. The other responded by saying, “We’ve got the power!” The march halted the traffic at the intersection of Kingsway and Wellington Street for about 15 minutes.

Even as the protest reached an end, a group of members smashed cymbals and drums with a drumstick. They were a little off beat, but the crowd swayed to the rhythm nevertheless.

Among them was Naden Abenes, a worker at another hotel who was on leave to work for the union. She had been attending the sit-ins almost every day and doled out water bottles to the marchers as they prepared to leave.

“It hurts inside,” she said, as she banged her chest. “But every day that we are out here fighting for the jobs of our members, we want to show the company we have not backed down. We continue to be energetic and optimistic because this is the only way we can make the company do the right thing. One day longer, one day stronger.”

*Story corrections, Aug. 13 at 4 p.m.: Article amended to include additional information from Unite Here Local 40 and correct an editing error about the current contract status of Metrotown Hilton workers.  [Tyee]

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