Behind the doors of Room 1509

A lot goes on behind the closed doors of any big city hotel room and on a Tuesday evening in April, at One King West, a union drive is underway.

Trump Hotel housekeepers, 25 of them, most of them women from the Philippines, perch on the king-size bed, the carpeted floor, the few chairs in the room, the windowsill, to learn how to become a union in five days.

The groundwork has been laid over several months, but management has officially been notified that a majority of workers in the proposed bargaining unit has signed up to join UNITE HERE Local 75.

In five days, a vote will be held at the hotel to test that majority.

The union represents hotel and hospitality workers in the GTA — more than 65 per cent of hotels in Toronto are unionized, most of them by UNITE HERE Local 75.

Union membership in Canada has been declining for decades, falling from 33.7 per cent in 1997 to 31.5 per cent in 2012. Next to Alberta, Ontario has the lowest rate of union participation. Quebec has the highest.

But in this age of ballooning CEO salaries and the rising cost of living, including the sky-rocketing price of home ownership, workers are showing a renewed interest in unionization, says David Sanders, organizing director for UNITE HERE Local 75.

UNITE HERE signed up 10,000 workers in North America last year, and plans to hit the same target in 2015.

“I think there is a real hunger for workers for unions. It’s tied to the fact that it’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet for people and their families,” says Sanders.

There is a lot of hopeful enthusiasm in Room 1509, and trepidation. Tomorrow the housekeepers will bring colour posters, bearing their names and faces, into the hotel to post in the “back of the house” – areas off limits to the public, to let management know that the union has the support of a majority of workers in the proposed unit.

“We are the Trump Hotel Toronto Union Organizing Committee,” it reads.

The bargaining unit will include all the workers at the hotel whose jobs have not been contracted out, including doormen, bellmen, the front desk, housekeeping and maintenance engineers.

There are 52 names and faces in the picture, and between 90-100 workers in the proposed bargaining unit. Often unions and management end up arguing about who belongs in the bargaining unit, and the Labour Relations Board has to step in.

The housekeepers must confront their employer and make demands, something that does not come naturally to many people.

“It’s okay to be nervous and a little bit afraid. When I first had to stand up to my supervisor, I was nervous. Then I was never nervous again,” David Sanders, the union’s organizing director, tells the group.

Many of the Trump housekeepers came to Canada as nannies. They are aware of the reputation Filipinos have for working hard, without complaint.

They have been working hard for three years. Grievances have begun piling up. The women – most of them petite, middle-aged moms – must carry their cleaning supplies and cleaning cloths in two separate bags, and a vacuum cleaner – between rooms. In some luxury hotels, including the Trump, the absence of unsightly metal carts is part of the luxury experience for guests.

Each day they are assigned a number of rooms to clean. If they can’t finish — if the rooms are especially dirty and take a long time to finish, or if they are unwell — they must finish up the following day, housekeepers say. Sometimes housekeepers help each other to finish on time.

The hotel declined to comment on this point.

Housekeepers work eight hours a day, five days a week. They are paid approximately $20 an hour. They are allowed nine days for illness.

Dinah Perez, 42, crumples when asked why she wants a union to represent her. She once slipped and fell on a wet bathroom floor at the Trump. She crawled to a phone to call for help. She was sent to hospital in a taxi, alone. She felt like she didn’t matter.

“Every time I think of what happened, I have tears in my eyes,” she says.

In the spring, the housekeepers learned that their benefits were being reduced.

“It’s all about respect … they don’t have it,” says union organizer Allan Pace, who was himself once a hotel worker.

Wednesday, April 22

The group is meeting to share stories about what happened when they confronted management. The mood is ebullient. They feel they took management by surprise.

“Is this a joke?” they were asked.

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Trump employees are told that management has likely consulted with lawyers and laid out a plan of action and rules for conduct for those in management. Even supervisors they regard as friends will be acting for management, they are told.

“Usually there are two phases, chaos and then lawyers. I think we’re in the chaotic phase,” says Marc Hollin, UNITE HERE Local 75 researcher.

The Trump

In 2003, before the tower was built, Toronto city councillor Pam McConnell (open Pam McConnell's policard), (Ward 28 Toronto Centre – Rosedale) sought and obtained a signed agreement that the Trump hotel would automatically allow union certification if a majority of workers in a bargaining unit signed union cards.

When UNITE HERE Local 75 asked the hotel management to make good on the agreement, the response was that the company that signed the agreement was no longer involved in the project.

“The company took the letter and never responded, then later responded that that was a different party that had signed that agreement and they had nothing to do with that. Rather than challenge them in the courts, we decided to organize the workers the way we normally do,” said Sanders.

Conflict

At work on Wednesday, the workers arrived bearing small flip notebooks labelled: OLRB (Ontario Labour Relations Board) Labour Law Violations. They had been told to record the date, time and the facts of possible labour law violations, as they happened.

Later, the union’s lawyer will file a list of alleged violations: Union literature was destroyed in front of employees, including posters bearing pictures of all the union supporters. A manager yelled at an employee in the men’s employee change room about his support for the union. Personalized letters were sent to all the affected employees, discouraging them from joining the union and raising the spectre of strikes and lost wages.

Many employees received phone calls at home from the employer at about 10 p.m. and were informed that their schedules were being changed because of an unusual increase in the late check-outs the following day.

“Since receiving the Union’s application for certification, the Employer has engaged in a campaign to defeat the Union’s efforts to represent the employees of Trump. The Employer has conducted its campaign through a number of different means, including surveillance in and outside the workplace, anti-union letters, conversations between managers and employees, the destruction of union materials in an intimidating manner in front of the employees, the purposeful disruption of work schedules to make it more difficult for people to exercise their rights under the Act and with direct threats of loss of income.”

The allegations have not been proven and management has not yet responded to the union lawyer.

Management declined to respond to specific questions from The Star. Instead it provided a statement.

“Trump International Hotel & Tower Toronto is committed to respecting the wishes of its associates who voted in favour of the union and encourages them to continue to be involved in and informed about the workplace. It is important to note that we have always and will continue to comply with all of our obligations under Canadian law, including the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000, Human Rights Code and the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Trump Toronto will continue to work collectively with our professional and passionate associates to ensure we continue to provide our guests with the service that has earned this property numerous awards including Forbes 5 Star status and the #1 hotel ranking in Toronto on TripAdvisor.”

“We Are Not Robots”

Voting day begins early for the union and employees. They are up before dawn, organizing rides to the hotel to vote before they begin work.

The housekeepers are determined. One of them gave birth the day before the vote. As soon as her baby was nursing properly and her bloodwork came back okay, she made the trip to the hotel to vote.

At the end of the day, the housekeepers are tired. In addition to their long days of physical work, they have been meeting in the evenings.

At 5 p.m. they begin gathering on the second floor of the Local 75 Housing Co-operative at 60 Richmond St., in a room with a concrete floor and piles of stackable chairs. They collapse in a tired but hopeful heap on the chairs.

The polls close at 5:15, and it doesn’t take long to count the votes.

The fact that they have won is almost anti-climatic – they have known since voting in the morning that they had a majority, still, it’s nice to know for sure.

The news is greeted with cheers, followed by an odd silence. They are all texting the news; reading and posting inside a phone app to supporters who have not yet arrived.

“As we got to the finish line, we grew closer and stronger, which is good,” says Charlotte Rapirap, 35.

She still believes in the values employees of the Trump are supposed to espouse: Passion, drive and enthusiasm.

“I thought they were missing and I wanted to regain those for employees. We were not feeling happy or satisfied or gratified. They weren’t listening. They were ignoring our complaints, our pains. Even when we tried to reach out, they didn’t listen. I guess they took us for granted.

“They see that we are housekeepers and they think we don’t have any brains, they think we’re just going to do as we are told. We are not robots. They pushed us to our limits.”

Soon they will begin negotiating their first contract.