Hotel Workers’ Strike
Media Advisory: BREAKING! Three downtown Vancouver hotels – Hyatt Regency, Westin Bayshore, Pinnacle Harbourfront – launch indefinite strike over need for safe and stable work
September 19, 2019
This morning, hundreds of hotel workers from the Hyatt Regency, Westin Bayshore and
Pinnacle Harbourfront hotels, represented by UNITE HERE Local 40, walked off the job in an
open-ended strike. This escalation in the dispute follows a lunch hour strike held on Tuesday.
After fourteen months of bargaining the hotels have failed to address significant outstanding
issues related to workload, safety and job security. Room attendants, chefs, front desk agents
and other staff of the high-end hotels are holding downtown strike actions for the first time in
nearly two decades, united in their fight to change the industry into one which offers safe,
stable and sustainable jobs.
The workers are demanding “One job should be enough!” in Vancouver’s booming hospitality
industry which makes record profits year after year, while the cost of living continues to rise in
Metro Vancouver. Many of the city’s hotel workers are struggling to provide for their families
with precarious, on-call shifts caused by the systemic cutting of hours in these hotels. Safety
remains a priority in this dispute, as many workers have stepped forward with complaints of
sexual harassment faced on the job, and extreme under-staffing has led to unsafe and
unsustainable workload levels. Vancouver’s downtown hotel workers stand together for better
quality jobs and an improved quality of life.
Picket Actions
Date: Thursday, Sept 19, 2019
Time: 7:00 AM
Where: Hyatt Regency, Westin Bayshore, Pinnacle Harbourfront hotels
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Contact: Sharan Pawa, 604-725-0053, spawa@local40union.com
