The power and pressure being brought to bear, to make sure that The Procaccianti Group (TPG) got their multi-million dollar Tax Stabilization Agreement (TSA) was enough to bend reality, as a five member committee was whittled down to three members and the final vote unanimous in favor of TPG.

City Hall was electric with meetings being conducted behind closed doors. What happened in the Finance Committee room was theater, the real deals were all made out of sight. The Finance Committee meeting seemed meticulously planned so that when it started, it would fall like a string of dominoes in favor of moneyed interests and to the detriment of hotel workers.

At issue was a 13-year TSA for the Fogarty Building site downtown, where TPG wants to build a new nine-story hotel. The building trade unions want the hotel, it will provide a couple years worth of good jobs. The hotel workers want the hotel and the jobs it will provide as well, but they wanted an amendment to the TSA “calling for workers to earn 1 1/2 times the federal poverty rate, or more than $14 an hour.”

Good wages for hotel workers are important. TPG is notorious for paying poorly, and the company requires their workers to do much more than workers at competing downtown hotels. Then there’s the steady stream of injuries to workers in TPG hotels. Unionization efforts at the Renaissance Hotel have dragged on for years and only recently did the hotel win a vote to unionize. Without the amendment, a new hotel full of underpaid, overworked and at-risk workers will be coming on-line even as Renaissance workers finally realize a fair contract.

On one side of the Finance Committee meeting room was Mayor Elorza’s Chief Operating officer, Brett Smiley, RI AFL-CIO leader George Nee, Michael Sabitoni, business manager for the RI Laborers’ District Council, state senator Josh Miller, a pile of lawyers and TPG reps, and prominent members of the Providence business community. Council President Luis Aponte stood nearby and monitored the proceedings.

Hotel workers and Unite Here! organizers, vastly outnumbered and outgunned, sat opposite.

Finance Committee Chair John Igliozzi was the city councilor who once suggested tying TSA’s to better wages way back in June, 2014. When it came time to amend the TSA, however, he was silent. Councilors Kevin Jackson and Sabina Matos were also silent, save to deliver the lines required to vote the TSA to the full City Council for final approval next month.

Missing from the committee meeting was Councilor Terrance Hassett, whose day job is Senior Investigator in the Workers’ Compensation Fraud and Compliance Unit at the Department of Labor and Training. He, like two other members of the finance committee, works for the state. It is well known that Governor Gina Raimondo wants this project to proceed. On background I was told that city council members were afraid of losing their jobs if they interfered with the deal, but nobody wanted to go on record.

(Given this, Providence voters might want to reconsider electing council members with state jobs.)

Hassett was a no show, but Councillor Carmen Castillo, a hotel worker herself, was there. She put her purse and coat down into her chair, then left the room to talk off stage with someone. While she was out of the room the Finance Committee meeting started and attendance was called. She was marked absent.

As the meeting got underway Castillo entered the room, recovered her purse and coat, and left without explanation.

There were three members left of the five member committee, enough for a quorum. As hotel workers looked on, the TSA was passed out of committee without the amendment they had requested. Millions of dollars in tax breaks were given to TPG.

There were smiles and handshakes all around as one half of the room erupted in enthusiastic conversation. Finance chair Igliozzi pounded his gavel for order, there was still the city’s contract with Local 1033 to be decided, so $40,000 worth of fine business suits moved outside and into the hallways, and eventually outside into the street.

The hotel workers gathered in a corner on the third floor so that a translator could explain to some of the Spanish speaking members what had happened.

But they understood.

This was government as business and business as usual.

The union vote resulted in 23 workers in favor and 17 opposed to joining the union. With this vote, the Renaissance becomes the third hotel in the city whose workers have organized to join the union.

“I am so proud that we decided to join the union today,” said Raquel Cruz a Renaissance Providence housekeeper. “We are breaking the cycle of racial inequity with higher wages and benefits so that everyone in Providence moves forward.”

Data shows that Union hotels in Providence increase racial equity with higher wages and better benefits. Given the demographics of the hotel workforce in Providence, any increase in wages or benefits would disproportionately benefit women and people of color.

According to the most recent census information, [Census Statistics are from the 2010 American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Housekeeping statistics use the EEO code 4230 “Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners.”] the typical housekeeper in Providence is a Hispanic woman making under $25,000 annually. This workforce earns significantly less than the median income for both white male and female full-time workers (at $52,543 and $44,007 respectively). The most recent Union hotel contract between Unite Here Local 217 and Omni Providence to be negotiated specifies that the lowest wage for housekeepers is $15.96 per hour, which would come out to over $33,000 annually.

Workers rallied with signs with the number 56 crossed out. According to the workers, these signs represent the desire to close the Latina wage gap, where nationally on average, Latinas earn 56 cents to the dollar that white, non-Hispanic males make.

[From a Unite Here! Local 217 press release]

“We are Providence, we want to be heard,” said Raquel Cruz, a housekeeper at the Providence Renaissance. “If this hotel company respects Providence, they will respect us.”

Said Hipolito Rivera, a houseman at the hotel, “We’ve been demanding for years that The Procaccianti Group give us a fair process to decide upon unionization. We call on the hotel to do the right thing. Treat us like equals, not adversaries. Respect us, respect the results of our election and negotiate a fair contract.”

The typical housekeeper in Providence is a Hispanic woman making under $25,000 a year, according to the most recent census information. This workforce earns significantly less than the median income for both white male and female full-time workers (at $52,543 and $44,007 respectively). The most recent union hotel contract to be negotiated by Unite Here Local 217 and Omni Providence specifies that the lowest wage for housekeepers is $15.96 per hour, which would come out to over $33,000 annually.

“I make the hotel lots of money every day.  I should not have to work three jobs just to get by,” said Cruz, “I just want to be able to help my child with their homework.”

Data shows that union hotels in Providence break the cycle of racial inequity with higher wages and better benefits. Given the demographics of the hotel workforce in Providence, any increase in wages or benefits would disproportionately benefit women and people of color.

Workers at the Renaissance are predominantly Dominican. A poster developed by the workers indicating union support showcases the Dominican flag as a background to the photos of dozens of supportive Renaissance workers.

(This post is based on a Unite Here! Local 217 press release.)

Mike Araujo

Araujo, in his acceptance speech, radicalized the event by calling attention to the ongoing labor struggles of hotel workers downtown, saying, “I can’t help but think that, right now, downtown, there’s a picket line going on because there are hotel workers being treated unfairly by The Procaccianti Group… We all profit from [the abuse of low wage workers]when we don’t think about it…

“As a movement we’ve never been courageous enough to say that we’re going to bend back the teeth of capitalism by organizing, we’re going to break off the fangs of militarism by teaching, and we’re going to share the wealth that we all build together by organizing every worker into a union that can defend them through their own means.”

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.

In addition, “workers at Procaccianti hotels suffered injuries resulting in days away from work at a rate nearly four times the national average. The incidence rate for work-related injuries and illness that resulted in days away from work was 42% higher at the Procaccianti hotels than the Omni and Biltmore hotels.”

Workers at The Procaccianti Group are worked harder than their counterparts at unionized hotels. At the Hilton workers are expected to clean anywhere from 17 to 23 rooms in one shift. The work-load per shift is 15 at the Omni and 14 at the Biltmore, where employees are protected by their union.

“My life has changed completely due to my injury and I am unable to work or even walk without the use of a cane,” said Susana Ramirez, a housekeeper at the Hilton for 13 years, in a statement,  “The Procaccianti Group needs to stop hurting us.”

Also speaking at the rally was Providence City Councilor Carmen Castillo, workers’ compensation lawyer Steven Dennis and RI Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (RICOSH) Executive Director Jim Celenza.

After the main section of the rally, workers continued with a candle-lit vigil and passed out copies of the report to people and politicians entering City Hall before the city council meeting.

Michael Sabitoni, business manager for the RI Laborers’ District Council, was perhaps a bit misleading when he rhetorically asked RI 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.]

The nearly 100 people who crammed into Nick-a-Nees on a rainy Sunday afternoon in celebration and remembrance of activist Richard Walton were given quite a show. This was the third annual Red Bandana Awards show.

The awards are granted to those who embody the spirit and work of Richard Walton. This year’s winners were Providence College Professor Eric Hirsch, a “tireless advocate for the poor and homeless” and the Providence Renaissance Hotel workers, who are fighting for “their right to decent working conditions and a living wage.”

The Gnomes, a global folk-fusion band, opened the event with about a half hour of live music before being joined on stage by emcee Bill Harley. Harley gave a short talk about Richard Walton, and read one of Walton’s emails to give a flavor  of the man, quoting him as saying, “I’d like life to be a hot hodge-podge of people of all sorts. All ages, all cultures, all colors, all everything.”

Harley then segued into a remembrance of Sister Ann, the amazing “social justice activist” and founder of the Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence who died earlier this year. Harley held a touching moment of silence that lasted about a minute before joking, “I think that’s the longest it’s been quiet at Nick-a-Nees.” Sister Ann was considered for an award, said Harley, but the committee making the decision decided to keep it as an award for the living.

After a song, Harley gave the first award to the Providence Renaissance Hotel workers. Receiving the award were organizer Heather Nichols-Haining and Mirjaam Parada. For many years now the workers at the Renaissance and more recently the Providence Hilton have been battling The Procaccianti Group over wages, workload and the right to organize. Workers at these hotels are getting hurt on the job, and management treats them as disposable. The award recognizes the importance of organized labor and union rights.

Professor Eric Hirsch was then called to the stage to be presented his award. Hirsch, ever the activist, reminded the audience that he’s involved in the Zero: 2016 effort to wipe out veteran homelessness by the end of this year and to wipe out chronic homelessness by the end of 2016. Hirsch asked everyone interested in this effort to go to rihomeless.org to find out what they can do to help.

Hirsch also reminded the audience that the school he teaches at, Providence College, recently had an event to deal with racial profiling and Renaissance Hotel boycott. After Hirsch received his award, the crowd was entertained by the Extraordinary Rendition Band, an appropriate choice, given their appearance in the viral “Joey Quits” video.

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:

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.

1. “That the College fire the Director of Safety and Security due to his failure to enforce PC’s policy against racial profiling.”
2. “That the College discipline the security officer who profiled the director of the College’s Black Studies Program.”
3. “That the College begin full enforcement of their policy against racial profiling.”
4. “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.