VANCOUVER—During the summer tourism season when the luxury Rosewood Hotel Georgia is fully booked, concierge Daphne Liou says the hotel is often understaffed, and she struggles to keep up with client demands.

“You’re by yourself, trying to deal with the guests in front of you, the phone calls, and also the cruise ship guests who walked in to ask you for directions and service,” she said.

“There’s no way you can keep it up by yourself and the support from management is not there.”

Liou is one of about 200 of the hotel’s workers who are on strike indefinitely.

The move came after contract negotiations between the union, Unite Here Local 40, and the hotel broke down on Saturday night.

Early Sunday morning, in the pouring rain, they set up a picket line in front of the main entrance. When Star Vancouver arrived on scene around 1 p.m., about a dozen workers were marching in a circle, chanting worker’s rights slogans, and banging on water cooler jugs, metal bowls and plastic buckets.

“We wanted to continue talking and bargaining but the hotel walked away from the bargaining table,” said union spokesperson Sharan Pawa, amidst a noisy backdrop of street traffic and picketing workers.

Rosewood Hotel Georgia joins an increasing list of downtown Vancouver hotels facing job action. Workers at Hyatt Regency, Westin Bayshore and Pinnacle Harbourfront also went on strike over the past week.

The workers are demanding safe, stable and sustainable jobs, and have been without a contract for eight months, Pawa said.

“As the hotel industry grows, continues to make record profits, what we’re seeing is that the hotel is cutting hours, cutting staff but the workload is still there ... we’ve heard of accounts where room attendants skip their breaks because they need to finish their work.”

The hotel’s managing director Safwan Abu Risheh did not provide an interview, but in a statement attributed to him, sent by a public relations firm, states the hotel “has demonstrated a serious commitment to achieving a fair and reasonable collective agreement.”

Another quote in the statement says Abu Risheh is “disheartened by the union’s strike action and will continue to pursue a fair and swift outcome.”

The hotel is still in operation, and on Sunday people could be seen walking past the picket line into the hotel at the main entrance on Georgia Street, across from the Vancouver Art Gallery in the downtown core.

A restaurant attached to the hotel was also in full swing, and staff behind the hotel’s front desk could be seen checking guests in or out.

“There’s over 200 staff that work here who are now off the job,” Pawa said, while standing on the sidewalk outside the hotel.

“We are sure the quality has gone down because there’s no room attendants in there making the beds properly.”

The hotel said it will not be hiring replacement workers and says its managers are replacing the hotel workers.

In its statement the hotel also said that it has offered — but that the union has turned down — raises, health and wellness initiatives, retirement contributions and more.

It also says it has offered to “protect employees from harassment by recording and removing” any guests, both visiting and registered, as well as restaurant guests, who treat staff inappropriately. It is also offering to hire an investigator for three months who will look into safety, discrimination and harassment issues in the workplace.

Rosewood Hotel Georgia has won numerous awards for its prestigious service, including best hotel in Vancouver for 2019 on an American rankings website.

The hotel’s website boasts that the “eminently comfortable accommodations,” first opened in 1927, is the city’s “most historic and elegant retreat.”

The establishment’s 156 rooms are “softly enrobed in a palette of light blues, ivory and chocolate,” and include “spa-inspired bathrooms.”

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For Liou the strike is about reciprocal respect.

In the summer months, “our hotel is always 100 per cent (booked) but we’re always understaffed,” she said.

“We all feel very proud of what we do ... but we kind of feel hopeless sometimes, we can’t do our job right.”

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