Hotel workers struggle to unionize

Novotel Mississauga worker Rekha Sharma, who had her part-time hours cut to zero for 10 months after she spoke at a rally in support of forming a union at the hotel, is simply frustrated by the whole ordeal.

The Toronto Star:

Queen’s Park should reform Ontario’s labour laws to make it easier for workers to unionize, say area hotel workers who have been disciplined, suspended and even fired for trying to form a union.

Unions give workers more job security and could help reverse the tide of low-wage, part-time and contract work sweeping Greater Toronto, they argue.

“Hotel work has a potential to be a good job where you can build a life, a family and a home. But right now it isn’t,” said Rekha Sharma, 27, a server in the main dining room of the Novotel Mississauga. Her part-time hours were chopped to nothing for 10 months in 2009 after she spoke at a rally in support of forming a union at the hotel.

“I would like a full-time job with benefits. I want to be able to go to the dentist, to fill a prescription,” said Sharma, who had to quit university and now juggles two part-time jobs to support herself and her disabled mother.

Sharma is among about a dozen hotel workers from Novotel properties in Mississauga, North York and Ottawa who have lost their jobs, been disciplined or had working hours cut since 2008 when they began organizing to form a union with UNITE HERE, Local 75.

Ontario Federation of Labour President Sid Ryan said the Novotel workers’ experience shows why changes are needed.

“The working poor who are working in precarious jobs as cleaners and in the hotel industry are being taken advantage of in many instances,” he said. “There is a desperate need to reform the Labour Relations Act and bring back some balance.”

Former Ottawa Novotel housekeeping worker Esperance Umwizaninde, a refugee from Rwanda whose 13-year-old son has leukemia, says she was told she wouldn’t be given time to take her son to medical appointments if she joined a union. The union alleges the intimidation continued until she was eventually fired in October last year.

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