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Hotel workers score a win - The government takes the side of hotel workers in their dispute with the Sheraton

June 11, 2010

On Thursday, June 3, members of Unite HERE Local 878, the hotel workers’ union, and its supporters, gathered in front of the Anchorage Sheraton to celebrate a complaint by the National Labor Relations Board against the hotel’s operators, Dallas-based Remington Hotels, alleging 13 unfair labor practices. The union had placed a boycott on the hotel last November because of its allegations (the Anchorage Hilton remains under a boycott by the union as well).

In a light rain, Local 878’s president, Marvin Jones, along with fired Sheraton server Gina Tubman, state representative and Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress Harry Crawford, Catholic priest Father Fred Bugarin, Lutheran Bishop Michael Keys and the AFL-CIO’s Alaska president Vince Beltrami, all touted the May 28 NLRB findings. Pins reading, “Sheraton Not Above the Law” were distributed and chants of “Boycott Sheraton” drew honks from cars passing by on Sixth Avenue.

Amongst the NLRB’s findings are: Remington bargained with no apparent intention of reaching an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement (the previous one expired in February 2009); Remington refused to meet at reasonable times and/or places for bargaining; Remington denigrated the union in the eyes of its employees; Remington implemented a bargaining proposal without notifying appropriate agencies of a dispute between it and the union, and changed terms and conditions of employment without first providing the union notice or an opportunity to bargain; management increased the number of rooms the employees were expected to clean and ceased paying for meal breaks; management suspended nine employees engaged in protected union activities, eventually firing four of them for passing out fliers at the hotel’s doors; and the Sheraton’s general manager, Denis Artiles, told employees the proposal management implemented was meant to “screw” the union.

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