The STEP UP Coalition is made up of the Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM), Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Olneyville Neighborhood Association (ONA) and various other activist groups in Providence. The CSA is a citizen-proposed ordinance that would address racial profiling and other abuses of power by police. Mayor Jorge Elorza recently said the CSA could pass before the end of the year.
This is the ninth year for PRONK! (Providence HONK!) which takes place every Indigenous People’s Day. It is not a Columbus Day parade. Local bands, such as the Extraordinary Rendition Band, What Cheer? Brigade, and Kickin’ Brass participated, as well as bands from around the country. Organizers describe PRONK! as “a cacophonous street celebration with out of town brass bands! We are a street intervention like no other, with outfits and misfits from Rhode Island and beyond – musicians, artists, activists, makers – taking over the streets as part of the Providence HONK Parade.”
Organizers go on to say that PRONK! “spawned from the original HONK! Festival in Somerville, MA that has “grown into a new type of street band movement—throughout the country and across the globe—outrageous and inclusive, brass and brash, percussive and persuasive, reclaiming public space with a sound that is in your face and out of this world.”
]]>This time the PawSox owners didn’t make any attempt at countering the event. This time the media showed up in force, with Channel 10 doing a live remote. The What Cheer! Brigade played four rousing selections and storytellers Len Cabral and Mark Binder (who has contributed to RI Future) entertained the crowd with stories. Kites were flown, games were played, children danced and the promise of a public park was glimpsed, if imperfectly.
The only elected official I noticed at the event was State Representative Aaron Regunburg, House District 4, on the East Side of Providence. He is opposed to building the stadium on that land.
Below are four videos of the What Cheer? Brigade, and photos from the event by Andrew Stewart and myself.
]]>Well the What Cheer? Brigade is at it again. And, evidently, so is management at the Renaissance. The band is again sticking up for oppressed hotel employees today at 5:30 when they picket outside of the downtown Providence hotel.
According to a press release:
]]>The picket line follows a delegation on March 25 where Renaissance Hotel employees, political and community leaders and workers from other area hotels attempted to begin a dialogue with their employer to improve working conditions. The Hotel refused to listen to the delegation. The Hotel immediately responded by issuing two letters encouraging employees to back down and by scheduling housekeeping employees to attend mandatory meetings on two consecutive days where high level managers attempted to convince employees that they just needed more time. When employees requested copies of the Hotel’s OSHA injury logs late last week, Hotel management responded in a letter stating that they do not have the last five years’ records as required by Federal law. The employees are now considering legal action to obtain the records.
Workers say the Hotel has always treated them poorly, but that conditions further deteriorated since the Procaccianti Group, a national hotel management company, took over the hotel in December 2012. The Hotel’s top management remains the same. Employees say they have had enough. They are demanding a voice on the job.
Raquel Cruz a housekeeper, said: “When the new owners took over, they changed the chemicals we use to clean rooms. The new chemicals make it hard to breathe and most housekeepers have rashes up and down their arms. They never trained us how to use them properly. We are all worried about the longterm damage they will cause to our bodies.”
Renaissance workers currently make significantly lower wages and benefits than their counterparts in union hotels like the Omni.
The workers have already planned several more public events in coming days and pledge to continue their fight until management accepts their demands for respect.
DS: From what I’ve seen of the press you’ve gotten, people are really psyched about your quitting the way you did, because it was indeed awesome. But they’re treating it like you guys made a cameo in a Dilbert cartoon: “Work sucks, so it’s sweet that you told your boss to shove it. Period.” But there’s a much more interesting political underpinning to what you did.
JD: There’s a big history to the video. You can sense in the manager’s face that we’ve had a rough relationship for a long time. I started work at the Renaissance in 2008 and quickly learned how bad it was there. Many people ask, “Why did you stay there if it was so bad?” Well, I had to. I was paying for school and this was at the bottom point of the recession–there were no other jobs in Providence.
Since I had to stay, I decided to fight to make the place better. My co-workers and I fought managers informally, confronting them with groups if they were doing something terrible or simply sticking up for ourselves in meetings. We also fought more formally, though, by organizing a union.
We went public with the union in January 2010, presenting the hotel with about 85% of workers signed up on union cards. The union had a card-check agreement with the hotel so we expected to quickly enter into negotiations. We did immediately win many concessions from the hotel–they were so scared of us having a formal union that they tried to appease us. Suddenly hey had all this money to go around they always denied they had! We got raises across the board, new uniforms, many of the worst managers were fired, and so on.
But they also began a vicious anti-union campaign. They quickly began giving me fewer shifts and less lucrative shifts. They held large captive-audience meetings where they spread lies about the union. Managers held private conversations with employees where they made statements like, “If the union comes in, we’ll have to fire half of the workers here.” The hotel even targeted and fired pro-union workers for fabricated reasons. My good friend, a strongly pro-union bartender who had worked at the place since it opened, was fired for supposedly giving away a shot for free. There were no witnesses, the security cameras were conveniently turned off that night, and they provided zero evidence other than the word of a single manager.
This is still going on. The hotel refuses to negotiate and they continue their anti-union campaign.
I was one of the leaders of the union campaign, and so these managers really didn’t like me. I knew that if I was going to give them the pleasure of me quitting that I would have to go out in a big way, and I did.
DS: Do you have a sense of what effects “Joey Quits” is having on your former colleagues? Is morale up? Are the bosses on edge — and does that make them meaner or nicer?
JD: I’ve spoken with a lot of workers who are still at the hotel and a lot of workers who were fired or left the hotel. All my friends who were fired for made up reasons–often directly by the manager in the video–are obviously thrilled about the whole thing. We all agree we’ve gotten back at them 3 million times over.
From everything I hear, the video is a big hit with workers still at the hotel. It became so popular that the hotel had to ban youtube from the hotel’s computers and they’ve had to instruct the phone operators to reject any media inquiries. I think it’s helped to instill a general attitude of rejecting the authority of the managers. I’ve heard the manager in the video has been extremely nice as of late, expect for one or two epic outbursts.
Several people have told me that the hotel has started telling workers that they should hate me for taking business away from the hotel. I don’t think I need to explain why that’s ridiculous–and it doesn’t seem anyone there is buying it. I’m sure in the long run that all this public attention has shame the hotel–and hopefully Marriott as a whole just a little bit–into treating their workers better.
DS: Did you guys have any allies in management?
JD: Some. It is important to note that low-level managers in the service industry often get exploited more than anyone. They are made to work 60 hours a week and kiss-ass all day for maybe a $30000 salary. I know that’s better than what a lot of people are pulling, but it still isn’t glamorous. We actually have an amazing post of our website from a former housekeeping manager at the Renaissance. He always respected the workers and stood up for people, and he was fired for it. His story is great though because he got to see all the disgusting stuff managers said about workers behind closed-doors.
DS: Do you think the conditions at the Renaissance are endemic to hotel work, or does it vary shop by shop? Is having a union vs not having a union the big difference?
JD: The conditions at the Renaissance are typical of hotels in the US. I’d actually say many hotels are worse because they haven’t scared the company with a union. There are cities where working conditions are decent because there is such a high density of unionized hotels. New York, for example, has something like 85% union density, and the workers at those hotels generally get treated very well. And there are unionized hotels all over where things are much better than at the Renaissance. Right down the street at the Biltmore and the Westin workers have all sorts of protections that they don’t have at the Renaissance. It’s not perfect there, but it’s much better.
DS: My sense is that the foreign press gets the labor organizing angle more. Is that your sense too? Why do you think it’s that way?
JD: Some domestic press gets the labor angle. The Huffington Post, for example, wrote a really amazing article. Our local Channel 10 did a good story, too. In general, though, the foreign press is much more interested into the labor angle. I did an interview for a big German paper and all we talked about was the US labor movement. The US is unique in the first world in it’s harsh anti-labor attitude. You could see that come over most viciously in the fights in Wisconsin and elsewhere over the past year. You can see it in our pathetic labor laws. And you can see it in the fact that we have the starkest inequality in the first world. The domestic press’ indifference to labor issues is just a reflection of the larger problem in the US. And I think the international press is so interested because they’re excited to see that there are people fighting for workers rights here.
DS: What do you want to do with all the attention and acclaim that’s followed from this?
JD: I’m trying to channel it all into the fight for hotel workers’ rights. We’ve just launched a website, www.joeyquits.com, where hotel workers from all over the country can post their stories of being mistreated in the hotel industry. I know my video has deterred my managers and maybe even Marriott as a whole from exploiting workers. As we collect stories from workers in hotels everywhere, we can hold the entire industry accountable. We already have a bunch of amazing posts and there will be more put up everyday. Visitors will be able to search by hotel name or city, so they can look up working conditions in the city they’re in or a city they’re visiting. There’s also a resources page that directs workers to organizations fighting for workers’ rights and tells non-workers how they can assist in the fight.
DS: Highlights and lowlights from the tour so far? There are rumors you got offered a pilot — are they true?
JD: I’ve really just been very busy–trying to get word out about the issues and setting up this website. It has been great getting to see all these shows, but there hasn’t been any of the celebrity fun you imagine would just appear. No pilot yet. Maybe the pilots’ union will get behind me though.
DS: Why have you already sold out? I mean, you wore a “f*** Nazi skinheads” shirt the last time What Cheer played one of my fundraisers, but you’re so prim and proper when you appear on GMA and Access Hollywood. What gives?
JD: Do you think that hurt your campaign? I’d like to sell out more–no real money from any of this! The band actually got in a lot of trouble on Good Morning America. We got yelled at multiple times for being too loud backstage and they even threatened to cut our segment to get us to shut up and stay in our room. I also got to say “union” of Access Hollywood. So don’t worry, we’re still keeping it real.
And, the details on next Saturday’s show:Saturday, November 19, 2011
Firehouse 13 (fh13.com)
8:00pm
$7
All Ages
Presenting:
What Cheer? Brigade – Providence’s own 19-piece brass mayhem party.
whatcheerbrigade.com
Brunt Of It – Evil sounding punk and ska from RI and Boston.
facebook.com/bruntofit
DJ Schleifdog spinning hip-hop, 80’s, booty bass and the most
tastefully selected out-of-leftfield pop hits.
PLUS a special guest, to be announced the day before the show!
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