Some of the business suits worn in the Providence City Council Finance Committee meeting last night were worth more than a hotel worker’s monthly salary.
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.
Hotel workers at the Providence Renaissance have voted in favor of joining UNITE HERE Local 217 today. Workers rallied after the votes were counted, demanding that The Procaccianti Group, the hotel’s owner, begin bargaining a contract in good faith.
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.
A strong majority of workers at the Providence Renaissance filed for a union election yesterday. The workers expect to win the election and proceed to negotiate a fair contract with the hotel owner The Procaccianti Group. The workers believe unionization will increase racial and gender equity in Providence.
Mike Araujo of Restaurant Opportunities Center RI and the One Fair Wage Coalition was given the Progressive Hero award by the RI Progressive Democrats of America (RIPDA) last night at a fundraising event held at Ogie’s Trailer Park in the West End of Providence. RIPDA Coordinator Sam Bell presented the award, noting that the award is usually given to a politician.
Hotel workers gathered outside Providence City Hall Thursday evening to call attention to a new report, “
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 University 
Hotel workers carried signs, beat drums and chanted outside the 
The new website paints an especially grim picture of TPG’s environmental record. “In 2011, the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council told Procaccianti subsidiary PBH Realty that it was in violation of six state freshwater wetland laws because of a man made pond PBH had made on a Jamestown property. Chris Powell, who was chairman of the Conservation Commission, said, ‘I chaired the commission for 27 years and these are the most blatant and obvious violations I have ever seen.’ Press accounts [
As Mayor Angel Taveras and Mayor-elect Jorge Elorza enjoyed a celebration of “the great city of Providence and what it has to offer” at the the neighboring 
Marino Cruz was 
The protesters were not just demanding Cruz’ reinstatement, they were there to demand fair wages, decent working conditions and plain old human decency on the part of The Procaccianti Group, the management company responsible for many hotels in Rhode Island and throughout the world.
Providence City Councilperson Carmen Castillo was marching with the protesters. Castillo is a fierce advocate for worker’s rights, having helped to organize a union at the Westin Hotel around 15 years ago. When she attempted to enter the hotel lobby, a police officer physically prevented her entrance by grabbing her arm and threatened with arrest. As can be seen and heard in the video, Castillo was not very pleased by this. In the next video we hear Castillo addressing the protesters.