#hotel workers union

[nethervoice]

THAT'S VOICEOVER EXPO GATHERS AT BLACKLISTED HOTEL

If you’re at the SOVAS That’s Voiceover Career Expo in Los Angeles at the moment, you should know this: You are giving business to a boycotted hotel. Don’t believe me? Go to fairhotel.org. It has a hotel finder and you’ll see that the Hilton Los Angeles Airport Hotel is on the list. Who’s boycotting the hotel? Unite Here Local 11, the hotel workers union representing 32,000 members. Why is the…

[reasonsforhope]

BTW: the Hot Labor Summer is 100% real

[juanabaloo]

i see a lot of y'all excited for the SAG AFTRA strike and the WGA strike. bring that energy to the UPS Teamsters if they strike in august. UPS posted a profit of nearly $14 Billion in 2022. so yeah the UPS company can pay.

do what the unions ask you to do. so for WGA and SAG AFTRA that means don't boycott / cancel your streaming services yet. (as of 07/13/2023)

(this blog is pro union and pro labor. the only union that's trash is any cop union, obvs.)

[thoughtportal]

this is what cops actually protect and serve: capital.

[macmanx]

“Our members were devastated first by the pandemic, and now by the greed of their bosses,” says Kurt Petersen, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, in a statement. “The industry got bailouts while we got cuts. Now, the hotel negotiators decided to take a four-day holiday instead of negotiating. Shameful.”

The unionized housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers, front desk agents, servers and food service workers want an immediate $5 an hour raise with raises totaling $11 over three years. Other asks include affordable health care and manageable staffing workloads.

“85% of my income goes to rent because I just moved to L.A.," said Cristina Betancourt, who works as a housekeeper at the Ritz Carlton Downtown. "It's really hard to even find a place in L.A. that you can afford on one income."

[feiofthefae]

This should go without saying, but the case will affect everyone protected under the NLRB, not just Amazon, Tesla / SpaceX, Starbucks and Trader Joe's workers. This includes WGA, SAG-AFTRA, healthcare workers, hotel workers, and anyone else who has been organizing recently.

Keep your eyes on this!

Jeff Bezos's Amazon and Elon Musk's SpaceX are both fighting in court to have the National Labor Relations Board declared unconstitutional. Starbuck's and Trader Joe's joined them in separate lawsuits. All of these companies have a disgraceful history of worker abuse and union busting. All of them have been charged by the NLRB with hundreds of violations of workers’ organizing rights The NLRB is standing up to their union busting. That’s why they’re trying to destroy the NLRB. I'm going to do my best to keep you all informed about this case as it snakes its way through the courts. The future of unions may depend on the final verdict. http://dlvr.it/T49LM1

[nethervoice]

SAG-AFTRA URGES MEMBERS NOT TO ATTEND VOICE ARTS AWARDS

The Union has spoken. After Thursday’s blog post entitled “SOVAS slaps striking hotel workers in the face” I contacted SAG-AFTRA for a reaction. This reaction came on December 5th. Below is the text of a message that went out to members: “Please be advised that the upcoming Society of Voice Arts and Sciences 10th Annual Voice Arts Awards Gala on December 10, 2023 at the Beverly Hills Hilton in…

[nando161mando]

German train drivers to strike after court motion fails

> A German labor court in Frankfurt ruled against an in urgent application filed by Germany's national rail operator Deutsche Bahn on Monday, which had attempted to stop a renewed strike action by the GDL train drivers' #union. #Germany #strike #railway #DeutscheBahn

[slots-a-fun]

The Terrace Rooms At The Cosmopolitan Las Vegas

You just have to try the Cosmo terrace rooms at least once in your life, or multiple times/year like us :p

Well, gather ’round, my fellow Vegas aficionados, for I’m about to spin a yarn about the rise of the mighty Cosmopolitan and what came before it. You see, long before the Cosmo graced the iconic Las Vegas Strip, there was a tale of demolitions and dreams. Once upon a time, the space that the Cosmopolitan now claims as its own was occupied by the ill-fated Jockey Club, a relic of the 1970s. This…

[mermazeablaze]

I have worked in the service industry - mainly hotel. & it's not just California (though I am glad for them striking). The service/hospitality industry is where people feel the most justified in treating you like shit. Because it's the 'most basic labor' that most people can do.

But they don't realize. When they can't cook or don't know how or don't want to - they have someone do it for them. Cleaning? You can have someone do it for you. Lawn care? Hire someone. Some place to sleep? A place is prepared & maintained for you.

Do you know what the pay is for *most* FOH (front of house) restaurant workers? $3-7/hr. Because they expect you to make the difference up with tips. Tips aren't wages. I'm going to say it again - tips aren't wages! There are days when business is slow & you still have bills. Or the fact most of the work is part time. & you have to overwork yourself with multiple shifts - if you're even able to get multiple shifts because places overstaff. Some places make you share tips. Or don't let you keep tips at all (it happens).

BOH (back of house) workers get paid $5-13/hr. & they're lucky if FOH shares tips with them (some places do. But again, tips are not wages). & again, most of those positions are part time & overstaffed.

In hotel, even the 5 Star ones. I have worked at a few 5 Stars - the pay is abysmal: $7.25-13/hr. A handful of hotels can go as high as $13.75-14/hr (if you're lucky). Most of those positions are part time, but due to Covid there's an employee shortage. So you'll get full time plus overtime, but at what cost?

FOH at hotel (desk clerk & concierge) typically don't get tips & most hotels frown on it. Meanwhile, BOH (bellhops, housekeeping & room service) get tips (if you're lucky). Some hotels have laundry as a separate department from housekeeping & they don't get tips at all. Spas are a separate entity even if they belong to the hotel & aren't a third party.

People also pay & treat service workers like shit because they believe it's work menial enough for young people to gain experience. Which also adds a layer of bias, "Young people are dumb & don't deserve nice things. They have to earn the right to be treated like a full fledged person by doing this "crappy job" first."

But then it feeds into, "That person is no longer young & still working that crappy job as an adult. Something MUST be wrong with them - dumb, lazy, drug addict, alcoholic, immature, etc."

((& more times than I can count. I have engaged with people who view service people outside of their place of work with as much fear & vitriol as they do homeless people. They flinch & eye you & keep their distance & won't make eye contact. You can almost see their skin crawl. Because in their mind - they're the same thing - people who don't deserve respect.))

& then it comes full circle to, "Ah, you're elderly & need money? Here's this easy job that anyone can do & it's respectable enough for you to do. It doesn't pay a lot. But you're old. What could you possibly need a whole lot of money for? You have a house right? Transportation? Surely, you're collecting SSI or something as your main income? Because you're old & should have your life figured out. Because we should only pay you enough for you to have petty cash - for bingo or something."

So, yes. hospitality workers in Cali SHOULD unionize. & continue to demand better pay & treatment. But so should hospitality & service workers everywhere.

& if you enjoy having hospitality & service workers to make your life easier - treat them with kindness. I don't care if they forgot to act chipper & smile. I don't care if they accidentally got your order wrong. I don't care if the front desk didn't state you're a double platinum rewards member & didn't offer you turn-down service.

TREAT. THEM. WITH. KINDNESS. & TIP THEM.

because i've not seen a lot of coverage on it, hotel workers in LA are on strike right now, too:

(x)

(x)

please remember to support these people as well!

[macmanx]

Workers have taken to the streets to fight for better pay and improved work condition across the country, including many in SoCal.

While delivery truck drivers and UPS were able to clinch an agreement to narrowly avoid a work stoppage, impasse has settled over contract negotiations in other industries. And other labor unions are eyeing walkouts and strikes.

Here are where some of these labor disputes stand this weekend.

[co-oprnr]

Prevent Workplace Bullying: Expert Advice for New F&B Managers

[fans4wga]

Is it true Tumblr is crossing the picket line by marketing One Piece?

It's unfortunate to have that show's ads blasted on all our dashboards, to be sure, but it doesn't exactly fit the definition of "crossing the picket line", which is specific strike terminology that's been muddied a bit by talk on the Internet.

Crossing a picket line generally means crossing an actual, physical picket line to work at a struck company, thereby disregarding the strikers. [Updated 1 September to clarify that crossing a picket line is specifically referring to workers crossing picket lines, not patrons.] (Recent example in the news: hotel workers on strike in California picketed hotels and called for a boycott; therefore, staying at those hotels was crossing a picket line.) It can also be used figuratively, and in that case it differs from strike to strike, depending on the specific union demands.

[Side note: there's no call for a boycott from WGA/SAG-AFTRA, so subscribing to streaming services/going to movie theaters isn't crossing a picket line at this time; however, people canceling streaming services in solidarity and leaving a note that explains they're canceling in support of the strikes is a move we wholeheartedly support! See WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser's interview about that here.]

Tumblr is a company, not a person, so SAG-AFTRA can't discipline it for marketing a Netflix show like it would discipline an individual (a stern talk from the board, or prohibiting them from SAG-AFTRA membership, etc.) There's no legal way for any union to enforce a no-marketing rule for companies. If Tumblr had a strong solidarity ethic, they'd turn down studio marketing campaigns, but that's a lot to expect from any profit-driven company and shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

So, tl;dr: crossing the picket line? Not exactly. Still a not-great thing to do? Absolutely, and you can always send Tumblr a feedback form expressing your disapproval that they're marketing for Netflix during the strikes.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

I deleted the ask, but someone wrote one basically saying "why do you post reaction videos to Helluva Boss? Don't you know the show exploits its workers and they're overworked and get burned out?"

And, I mean, I love your energy, person who asked, definitely hold on to those values and speak up about this. But also, I am afraid I might have some bad news for you about literally the whole entire animation industry.

As near as I can make out from the sparse journalistic reporting that's been done on SpindleHorse -- and as a sidebar, please for the love of god read actual reporting about these things and not just callout posts and fandom discourse -- as near as I can make out, SpindleHorse as a studio is neither all that much better nor all that much worse than basically anywhere else in the industry on their level. It seems like it is (or was? Hazbin Hotel seems to be run differently) a studio mostly run by contracting people on a project-by-project basis, which leads to a crapton of turnover, and a huge need for organizing and onboarding, which according to the reporting I have read, the producers and freelancers have struggled to balance and manage properly, which has negatively impacted a number of the workers.

Top that with the usual catty, clique-based backbiting, sniping and poorly managed conflict resolution that's just kinda endemic in creative environments mostly staffed by twentysomethings and stressed out freelancers, and you have the recipe for a workplace where a lot of people are going to have a great time and feel creatively fulfilled, and a lot of people are going to come away feeling justifiably burnt the fuck out and exploited.

All of this is... not especially unusual for the animation industry, or indeed for any creative industry. Which is not to say that it is good, or that it should be allowed to be normal, or that it shouldn't be reported on and criticized (and please for the love of god support unionization efforts because that's the only thing that will actually address these kinds of systemic problems). It's just to say that if those kinds of issues are the line in the sand you draw where you refuse to engage with a studio's output...

Then, for starters, say goodbye to basically all of anime, because the Japanese animation industry is actively in a state of crisis trying to recruit new talent because its working conditions and pay are so astonishingly abysmal. And the horror stories that escape from that industry make the issues at SpindleHorse look like summer camp at times.

But you also have to say goodbye to a lot of American and European animation. Please do not imagine that Disney and its subcontractors, or that Nickelodeon or Warner Bros, are benevolent employers. They exploit their staff brutally and are currently trying to crush the labor value of animation with threats of generative AI being used to replace jobs. But those corporations also have extremely well-funded PR departments and the ability to silence employees with NDAs and threats of blackballing, so you don't get to hear as many of the horror stories as you might from a smaller independent studio that's less able to silence criticism by holding people's careers hostage.

All of this is to say that 1) it's valid and important to have criticism of both large and small-scale animation studios, and to keep the well-being and happiness of the workers higher in your priorities than the output of Products™.

And 2) if you're going to have a principle for what kinds of problems make a studio's output morally untouchable for you, and what kinds of problems you think should make a studio's output untouchable to other people, you do need to apply that principle consistently to the entire industry, and not just to the independent animation studio that happens to be surrounded by the internet's most inflammatory fandom discourse.

If you don't apply that principle consistently, maybe don't send reproachful messages to strangers scolding them for not living up to your standards, and even if you do apply that principle consistently, maybe still don't do that, because it's mostly quite annoying, and doesn't really do anything to support animation workers struggling for better working conditions.

The Animation Guild in the US is currently in the middle of a bargaining process with their industry, and they have a social media press kit as well as relevant talking points on their website which you can use to post in solidarity with the workers. If it comes to a full industry strike, consider donating to their strike funds to help them maintain pressure. Outside of the US, try and find out what (if any) local unions exist for animation workers, and maybe sign up to their mailing lists. They will let you know what kind of support they need from you.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Housing is a labor issue

There's a reason Reagan declared war on unions before he declared war on everything else – environmental protection, health care, consumer rights, financial regulation. Unions are how working people fight for a better world for all of us. They're how everyday people come together to resist oligarchy, extraction and exploitation.

Take the 2019 LA teachers' strike. As Jane McAlevey writes in A Collective Bargain, the LA teachers didn't just win higher pay for their members! They also demanded (and got) an end to immigration sweeps of parents waiting for their kids at the school gate; a guarantee of green space near every public school in the city; and on-site immigration counselors in LA schools:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Unionization is enjoying an historic renaissance. The Hot Labor Summer transitioned to an Eternal Labor September, and it's still going strong, with UAW president Shawn Fain celebrating his members victory over the Big Three automakers by calling for a 2028 general strike:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/uaw-general-strike-no-class

The rising labor movement has powerful allies in the Biden Administration. NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is systematically gutting the "union avoidance" playbook. She's banned the use of temp-work app blacklists that force workers to cross picket lines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

She's changed the penalty for bosses who violate labor law during union drives. It used to be the boss would pay a fine, which was an easy price to pay in exchange for killing your workers' union. Now, the penalty is automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And while the law doesn't allow Abruzzo to impose a contract on companies that refuse to bargain their unions, she's set to force those companies to honor other employers' union contracts until they agree to a contract with their own workers:

https://onlabor.org/gc-abruzzo-just-asked-the-nlrb-to-overturn-ex-cell-o-heres-why-that-matters/

She's also nuking TRAPs, the deals that force workers to repay their employers for their "training expenses" if they have the audacity to quit and get a better job somewhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

(As with every aspect of the Biden White House, its labor policy is contradictory and self-defeating, with other Biden appointees working to smash worker power, including when Biden broke the railworkers' strike:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

A surging labor movement opens up all kinds of possibilities for a better world. Writing for the Law and Political Economy Project, UNITE Here attorney Zoe Tucker makes the case for unions as a way out of America's brutal housing crisis:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-unions-should-join-the-housing-fight/

She describes how low-waged LA hotel workers have been pushed out of neighborhoods close to their jobs, with UNITE Here members commuting three hours in each direction, starting their work-days at 3AM in order to clock in on time:

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1669088899769987079

UNITE Here members are striking against 50 hotels in LA and Orange County, and their demands include significant cost-of-living raises. But more money won't give them back the time they give up to those bruising daily commutes. For that, unions need to make housing itself a demand.

As Tucker writes, most workers are tenants and vice-versa. What's more, bad landlords are apt to be bad bosses, too. Stepan Kazaryan, the same guy who owns the strip club whose conditions were so bad that it prompted the creation of Equity Strippers NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, is also a shitty landlord whose tenants went on a rent-strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

So it was only natural that Kazaryan's tenants walked the picket line with the Equity Stripper Noho workers:

https://twitter.com/glendaletenants/status/1733290276599570736?s=46

While scumbag bosses/evil landlords like Kazaryan deal out misery retail, one apartment building at a time, the wholesale destruction of workers' lives comes from private equity giants who are the most prolific source of TRAPs, robo-scabbing apps, illegal union busting, and indefinite contract delays – and these are the very same PE firms that are buying up millions of single-family homes and turning them into slums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Tucker's point is that when a worker clocks out of their bad job, commutes home for three hours, and gets back to their black-mold-saturated, overpriced apartment to find a notice of a new junk fee (like a surcharge for paying your rent in cash, by check, or by direct payment), they're fighting the very same corporations.

Unions who defend their workers' right to shelter do every tenant a service. A coalition of LA unions succeeded in passing Measure ULA, which uses a surcharge on real estate transactions over $5m to fund "the largest municipal housing program in the country":

https://unitedtohousela.com/app/uploads/2022/05/LA_City_Affordable_Housing_Petition_H.pdf

LA unions are fighting for rules to limit Airbnbs and other platforms that transform the city's rental stock into illegal, unlicensed hotels:

https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/publication/strs-in-los-angeles-2022/Wachsmuth_LA_2022.pdf

And the hotel workers organized under UNITE Here are fighting their own employers: the hoteliers who are aggressively buying up residences, evicting their long-term tenants, tearing down the building and putting up a luxury hotel. They got LA council to pass a law requiring hotels to build new housing to replace any residences they displace:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-28/airbnb-operators-would-need-police-permit-in-l-a-under-proposed-law

UNITE Here is bargaining for a per-room hotel surcharge to fund housing specifically for hotel workers, so the people who change the sheets and clean the toilets don't have to waste six hours a day commuting to do so.

Labor unions and tenant unions have a long history of collaboration in the USA. NYC's first housing coop was midwifed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1927. The Penn South coop was created by the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. The 1949 Federal Housing Act passed after American unions pushed hard for it:

http://www.peterdreier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Labors-Love-Lost.pdf

It goes both ways. Strong unions can create sound housing – and precarious housing makes unions weaker. Remember during the Hollywood writers' strike, when an anonymous studio ghoul told the press the plans was to "allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses?"

Vienna has the most successful housing in any major city in the world. It's the city where people of every income and background live in comfort without being rent-burdened and without worry about eviction, mold, or leaks. That's the legacy of Red Vienna, the Austrian period of Social Democratic Workers' Party rule and built vast tracts of high-quality public housing. The system was so robust that it rebounded after World War II and continues to this day:

https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/

Today, the rest of the world is mired in a terrible housing crisis. It's not merely that the rent's too damned high (though it is) – housing precarity is driving dangerous political instability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Turning the human necessity of shelter into a market commodity is a failure. The economic orthodoxy that insists that public housing, rent control, and high-density zoning will lead to less housing has failed. rent control works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

Leaving housing to the market only produces losers. If you have the bad luck to invest everything you have into a home in a city that contracts, you're wiped out. If you have the bad luck into invest everything into a home in a "superstar city" where prices go up, you also lose, because your city becomes uninhabitable and your children can't afford to live there:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#yimby

A strong labor movement is the best chance we have for breaking the housing deadlock. And housing is just for starters. Labor is the key to opening every frozen-in-place dysfunction. Take care work: the aging, increasingly chronically ill American population is being tortured and murdered by private equity hospices, long-term care facilities and health services that have been rolled up by the same private equity firms that destroyed work and housing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

In her interview with Capital & Main's Jessica Goodheart, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo describes how making things better for care workers will make things better for everyone:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-12-13-labor-leader-ai-jen-poo-interview/

Care work is a "triple dignity investment": first, it makes life better for the worker (most often a woman of color), then, it allows family members of people who need care to move into higher paid work; and of course, it makes life better for people who need care: "It delivers human potential and agency. It delivers a future workforce. It delivers quality of life."

The failure to fund care work is a massive driver of inequality. America's sole federal public provision for care is Medicaid, which only kicks in after a family it totally impoverished. Funding care with tax increases polls high with both Democrats and Republicans, making it good politics:

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/4/7/voters-support-investing-in-the-care-economy

Congress stripped many of the care provisions from Build Back Better, missing a chance for an "unprecedented, transformational investment in care." But the administrative agencies picked up where Congress failed, following a detailed executive order that identifies existing, previously unused powers to improve care in America. The EO "expands access to care, supports family caregivers and improves wages and conditions for the workforce":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/04/18/executive-order-on-increasing-access-to-high-quality-care-and-supporting-caregivers/

States are also filling the void. Washington just created a long-term care benefit:

https://apnews.com/article/washington-long-term-care-tax-disability-cb54b04b025223dbdba7199db1d254e4

New Mexicans passed a ballot initiative that establishes permanent funding for child care:

https://www.cwla.org/new-mexico-votes-for-child-care/

New York care workers won a $3/hour across the board raise:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/new-york-budget-fair-pay-home-care/

The fight is being led by women of color, and they're kicking ass – and they're doing it through their unions. Worker power is the foundation that we build a better world upon, and it's surging.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table