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Hotel workers at the Providence Hilton and Renaissance hotels in downtown Providence are still working without a contract, and are still experiencing work-related injury and illness at rates 69% higher at the Hilton and 85% higher at the Renaissance Hotel than the national average.
Last night workers rallied at the Providence City Hall entrance used by Providence City Council members to let them know that The Procaccianti Group (TPG), the company that runs both hotels, is literally grinding profits out of the long term health of their employees.
People work so that they can maintain their health and lives, not so that those lives can be used up by greedy corporations that value profit over people. What TPG is doing is deeply immoral, which is why the boycott of all TPG hotels is so important. The utter disregard displayed by the Rhode Island General Assembly towards the plight of these workers and their rights has been sickening, and a stain upon our state.
Mike Araujo, on his way to receive his Progressive Hero award from the RI Progressive Democrats of America for his work with the Restaurant Opportunities Center and the One Fair Wage Coalition, stopped by the hotel workers’ protest to lend his support.
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Michael Sabitoni, business manager for the RI Laborers’ District Council, was perhaps a bit misleading when he rhetorically askedRI NPR reporter Ian Donnis, “Why pick on this one — we didn’t even build yet — when I got 50 percent unemployment in the Building Trades?”
Sabitoni was referring to Unite Here Local 217’s efforts to delay the construction of a proposed hotel on Fountain Street. Building a new hotel would provide much needed jobs to the building trades. The proposed hotel is to be paid for and built by The Procaccianti Group (TPG), a company that runs two hotels in downtown Providence: the Renaissance and the Hilton.
Unite Here Local 217 has been in a fight with TPG for a union, fair wages and a contract for over three years. These two hotels pay the lowest wages, demand the most work, and treat employees worse than any other hotels in Providence.
In short, TPG’s treatment of labor in Providence has been nothing short of disgraceful, and at times has been monstrous.
Short of a strike, one of the most powerful weapon a union has is a boycott. Unite Here Local 217 has called for a boycott of TPG hotels until such a time as TPG begins to sit down and work out a contract with hotel workers that ensures decent wages, decent working conditions and respect.
Geroge Nee, president of the RI AFL-CIO, knows the power of boycotts. In a story Nee tells often, he famously came to Rhode Island in 1971 to help organize a successful lettuce boycott for the United Farm Workers of America.
Boycotts are difficult to enforce. With a boycott you’re asking all those in support of workers to change their buying habits. Sometimes you’re even asking workers, businesses and supporters to suffer economic privation as they avoid purchasing needed commodities.
Boycotts depend on worker solidarity.
Union busters know that strikes and boycotts can be broken as soon as workers become hungry enough. Tactics include waiting out the workers, or playing one set of workers against another. Few people are going to honor a boycott when their kids can’t be fed and their mortgage can’t be paid.
When Sabitoni said to WPRI‘s Dan McGowan, “We cannot wait any longer. We need jobs and we need them now,” he was basically admitting that for his people, the boycott is over. They were too hungry to wait anymore.
Solidarity, like a chain, is only as strong as it’s weakest link.
[I reached out to Nee and Sabotoni for comment, and haven’t heard back from either of them yet, but this post will be updated if they chose to respond.]
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Hotel workers and supporters protested for fair pay, fair treatment and fair union negotiations outside the Providence Hilton Hotel until almost midnight on May 15. The “block party” actually a protest and boycott, last nearly two hours. Protesters were joined by Chris Hasslinger and others representing Brown Universitymedical students, who had recently moved a planned conference out of the hotel in support of the hotel workers’ efforts.
Some hotel patrons were extremely upset by the legal, peaceful protest. Two woman, luggage in tow, decided to take their business elsewhere after talking to the picketers. One wonders how long The Procaccianti Group, the company that manages the hotel, can afford to throw money away while fighting against the rights of workers to organize and have decent lives.
This short video provides a flavor of the evening:
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The Providence College Coalition Against Racism held a press conference, followed by a march through the Providence College (PC) campus, “to protest the ongoing racial profiling on campus and the failure of the college administration to stop doing business with the Renaissance Hotel.”
Dr. Julia Jordan-Zachary has been a professor at Providence College for seven years and has been stopped by campus security eight times. She is the director of PC’s Black Studies Program and has recently been promoted to full professor. PC has a policy prohibiting racial profiling.
The Coalition maintains that the PC director of Safety and security, Jack Leyden, is not enforcing this policy.
“Some try to discredit our experiences with claims such as ‘It must be how they are dressed,’” said Jordan-Zachary, “and I always want to say, ‘I survived 18 years as a black female academic. I think I know how to dress.’”
“I do everything conceivably possible not to draw the attention of security guards on this campus,” said Jordan-Zachary, such as “trying to figure out how to walk through buildings so that I am almost invisible,” and selecting classrooms to teach in that are as close as possible to her office to avoid long walks on campus.
Student Bini Tsegaye, a graduating senior, also spoke about the systemic racism and profiling on the PC campus. “For four years straight I’ve been stopped and questioned by security and safety officers, and most of the time they drive around in their van to see if I belonged on campus.”
Tsegaye got a job on campus, thinking that “being a student employee would decrease the constant interrogation and profiling, since security officers would be working with me. But that’s not the reality I saw on my job.”
In addition to calling for an end to racial profiling on campus, Professor Cedric de Leon called upon PC to stop recommending the Providence Renaissance Hotel for college events because of “the owners’ failure to respond in a legal manner to workers’ efforts to organize a union.” The Renaissance and the Providence Hilton, both located downtown, are managed by The Procaccianti Group (TPG).
When PC students and faculty approached the college about boycotting the Renaissance, they were told that there was “no compelling interest for Providence College to advise the families of our students and our alumni to avoid using the hotel.”
Professor de Leon disagrees. Providence College is a Catholic school. “This inaction,” says de Leon, “is a violation of Catholic social thought, and is due to the fact that those whose rights are being violated are by and large people of color and therefore of little social importance either to the PC administration or to TPG.”
“The fact that PC insists on using anti-union hotels, despite the many other hotels in Providence,” said De Leon, “suggests that a strong personal connection between PC and TPG is preventing the administration from doing what is right.”
Two hotel workers, Santa Brito from the Renaissance and Jonah Zinn from the Hilton, spoke about working conditions at the hotels and the impossibility of negotiating with TPG.
Brito, who is currently not working due to health problems she received on the job, recalled being pregnant, and “at the moment I went to give birth [TPG] tried to fire me.”
“We are also fighting against racism in the hotel,” said Brito. “We are living day to day with the racism in this hotel and we need to stop it now.”
“One of my co-workers,” said Zinn, “the hotel tried to fire her two weeks after she gave birth to twins. While she was pregnant the hotel refused to reduce” the number of rooms she needed to clean in a shift.
The Coalition presented four demands.
“That the College fire the Director of Safety and Security due to his failure to enforce PC’s policy against racial profiling.”
“That the College discipline the security officer who profiled the director of the College’s Black Studies Program.”
“That the College begin full enforcement of their policy against racial profiling.”
“That the College refrain from doing business with the Renaissance Hotel until management grants the workers a fair process to decide on unionization.”
After the press conference, de Leon led a march through the campus. After the march students and faculty stepped forward to describe the ways they were made to feel uncomfortable or even endangered on campus by PC security or fellow students. de leon finally led those still in attendance to sing “We Shall Overcome.”
Listening to those speaking out, its clear PC has a lot to overcome before being known as a welcoming, inclusive campus, able to live up to its Catholic ideals.
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The groups are “seeking a city ordinance that would require all companies getting tax breaks in Providence to pay workers a living wage of at least $15/hr, provide paid sick days, health benefits, and fair, predictable schedules.” They also want the city to “follow the First Source ordinance by hiring residents of Providence, prioritize hiring people from high poverty neighborhoods, and make sure that people working these jobs have a pathway to a real career by using apprenticeship programs.”
The groups are also asking Mayor Jorge Elorza to live up to the campaign promises he made while still a candidate at a mayoral forum in South Providence, “to set up a community board with the power to approve/disapprove projects, take back money if companies aren’t living up to what they say they’ll do, and negotiate the construction of projects community members identify as needs, such as affordable housing, or fixing up an abandoned lot into a park.”
The Providence Police Department cleared the streets ahead of the marchers, who started their protest outside of Gourmet Heaven on Weybosset St. This is the third time protesters gathered outside the restaurant, which is accused of stealing wages from employees here in Rhode Island in a situation similar to Connecticut where substantial fines have been levied against the company for wage theft. Two workers addressed the crowd, and spoke about the abusive working conditions they say they endured. One worker said he was told, when he demanded his pay, that if he complained the management would have him deported.
The marchers then walked a short way up the street to Cilantro restaurant, a chain recently fined by the US Labor Department for wage theft to the tune of $100,000. Oddly, a Cilantro worker met the crowd, offering tortilla chips and bottled drinks, which were refused. “We don’t want your crumbs, we want our money,” quipped Michael Araujo of ROC-RI.
The march then continued across the city to the Providence Hilton Hotel, owned by The Procaccianti Group, where hotel workers were already outside picketing. The two groups merged into a protest of well over 150 people. The workers at the Providence Hilton announced a worker-led boycott of the hotel, joining the boycott efforts of workers at the Renaissance Providence Hotel (also owned by Procaccianti Group.) Employees from the Omni Providence Hotel were also on hand to support the boycott effort.
City Councillor Carmen Castillo spoke to the crowd about her experiences working at the Omni Providence Hotel, which was owned by the Procaccianti Group when it was called the Westin. Since the Procaccianti Group sold the hotel, worker conditions have markedly improved. Also speaking to the crowd was hotel worker Santa Brito.
The protest then headed for the Providence City Hall, stopping along the way at the Subway sandwich shop attached to the skating rink. Here Jo-Ann Gesterling, a fast food worker from Wendy’s, spoke to the crowd. Gesterling has led previous at her store and was arrested last year in Hartford CT during a Fight for $15 protest there. Gesterling talked about the importance of raising the minimum wage to $15, and about the effort to improve working conditions at her restaurant.
The final stop of the march was Providence City Hall, where Malchus Mills of DARE called on Mayor Jorge Elorza to honor his campaign commitments and enforce the First Source ordinance, which prioritizes city hiring from Providence communities. Mills also called upon the City Council to demand fair wages and benefits for workers from companies seeking tax stabilizations from the city. Also speaking at the City Hall was Jeffrey Santos, member of Carpenters Local 94.
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