Workers Rally for Justice at Anchorage Sheraton

by Mike Hall, Aug 31, 2010

Some 200 Alaskan union members rallied recently in support of workers at the Anchorage Sheraton hotel where UNITE-HERE Local 878 members are fighting for a fair contract and against a fierce union-busting campaign. The rally is part of the nationwide fight UNITE-HERE  is waging against hotels that abuse workers and fight their  freedom to form unions.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told the crowd (see video below):

Inside this building, managers are using time-worn schemes to curtail the freedoms of free people. They’re racking up the labor violations as fast as they can…. They’ve fired employees for handing out leaflets. They’ve banned business agents from the premises. They’re pushing right-to-work-for-less propaganda on the hardest-working, lowest-paid employees they’ve got.

Sheraton faces more than a dozen unfair labor practice charges filed by the National Labor Relations Board in June.  The charges include bad faith bargaining following the expiration of the previous contract in August 2009, disciplining nine workers and firing four others for supporting the union, illegally implementing a new contract, refusing to recognize the union and threatening workers for supporting the union.

The hotel is owned by Dallas-based Remington Hotels that Trumka  in speech later that day, called the “one of the biggest union-busters around.”

Remington’s Web site boasts that it “provides property management services that outperform the industry.”

“Outperform.” You know what they mean by that: They scrape that extra few dollars off the hides of the working men and women who clean the rooms and launder the sheets, who staff the desks and cook the food.

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