May Tanjusay: Why we remain on strike at Vancouver's iconic Hotel Georgia
Credit to Author: Stephen Snelgrove| Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2019 18:00:44 +0000
I am a room attendant at the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, Vancouver’s most glamorous hotel, where I am proud to have served guests for six years. I am also on strike at the only luxury hotel in Vancouver that has refused to agree to the safety, job security, and wage standards that ended the strikes at every other property in the city days ago.
Vancouver hotel workers at four high-end hotels walked out on strike four weeks ago, demanding wages that were enough to live on in our city, an end to the dangerous workloads that cause injury to too many women, and a secure future for ourselves and our families. It was the first labour dispute of its kind in decades in our city. After 28 days, every hotel under strike in Vancouver agreed to the same standards on these issues — except for my hotel, the Rosewood Hotel Georgia.
What Hotel Georgia doesn’t want guests or the public to know is that in order to provide the five-star service we are known for, I am worked to the bone alongside my coworkers in conditions that leave me aching with physical pain at the end of every day, sometimes too exhausted to even cook dinner for myself. My coworkers and I get no proper system for vacation requests and no paid sick days — there’s no respect for our health or our family’s lives, they don’t treat us like we are people.
One of our most important strike issues is workplace safety. It’s our opinion that management keeps the hotel severely understaffed and then creates a system for the hotel to operate by forcing one woman to carry the workload of two on her shoulders to save them labour expenses, even though industry research indicates the Hotel Georgia is experiencing record revenues.
Women who work with me are constantly at risk for and experiencing injuries, because room attendants are rushed to do more for less pay, always skipping our breaks and forced to cut corners in our safety to make it through the gruelling workloads and physically exhausting labour we do, with no regard from management for the high risk of injuries and chronic pain these conditions cause us. We do gruelling labour, all under constant pressure to do the work of two women for pay that isn’t enough for one.
Even though every other Vancouver hotel that recently settled their strike agreed to pay raises of up to 25 per cent, Hotel Georgia has failed to come anywhere near offering us an economic package that is enough to live on in Vancouver. As a single woman, the cost of living here and the failure of Rosewood Hotel Georgia to pay enough means that soon, my coworkers and I will be forced out of the city in which we serve guests.
Every other hotel under strike in Vancouver has worked meaningfully with their workers and ended strikes at those properties by agreeing to wage, safety, and job protection standards that every single worker in Vancouver deserves regardless of their industry. It is unconscionable that Hotel Georgia, the No. 1 hotel in Canada, has become the only hotel in Vancouver failing to settle the strike and refusing to agree to the same standards afforded to workers in other high-end Vancouver hotels.
To be worthy of its award-winning status, Rosewood Hotel Georgia should become a hotel that Vancouver hotel workers aspire to work for — one that provides hotel workers with jobs that support us and our families, respects our contributions, and offers a future in the industry. Now that would be truly iconic.
May Tanjusay is a striking room attendant at Rosewood Hotel Georgia. This piece was co-written by Sharan Pawa of Unite Here Local 40.
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