Employees at W Boston, Back Bay Hotel vote to unionize

About 200 to join growing ranks of hospitality workers local

May 18, 2011|By Katie Johnston Chase, Globe Staff

Employees of the W Boston and the Back Bay Hotel have overwhelmingly voted to unionize, bringing the number of organized workers at Boston hotels to about 4,000, roughly 60 percent of all full-service hotel workers.

Around 200 housekeepers, bellhops, restaurant staff, valets, and maintenance workers at the two hotels are now members of Unite Here Local 26, the Boston division of the national hospitality workers union. Union officials said membership gives the workers a pension plan, low-cost health insurance, and a limit on the number of rooms they have to clean every day.

“It equalizes the playing field for hotels, and it gives workers the ability to question management without fear of retribution,’’ said Brian Lang, president of Local 26.

Nestor Garcia, 41, a food runner in the W Boston’s restaurant and a veteran of several steelworkers unions, helped organize the vote at the W. Garcia said his weekly health insurance bill will drop from $106 to $12, and his wages will increase 90 cents an hour by January. And the ability to file grievances will improve employees’ relationship with management, he said.

“If there is any doubt that we are hard workers, Local 26 will make it disappear,’’ Garcia said.

The Back Bay Hotel employees were previously unionized, but in 2006 they voted to disband the union, by a single vote. Local 26 appealed, saying pressure from hotel management and handbook rules restricting union activity tainted the election, and the National Labor Relations Board ordered a new election. There is still a hostile relationship between the union and the hotel, according to Lang, who said management also tried to interfere with the vote held earlier this month.

Back Bay Hotel general manager Mark Roche-Garland declined to comment on the elections. The hotel, formerly called Jurys Boston Hotel, is owned by the Dublin-based Doyle Collection.

The W Boston is owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., which operates four other unionized hotels in Boston. Starwood and W Hotel officials did not return calls seeking comment.

Hospitality workers’ interest in unionizing has grown since Hyatt Hotels Corp. fired 98 nonunion staff members at its three Boston-area hotels in the summer of 2009, replacing them with contract workers earning half as much. “For workers to stand up and decide they’re going to form a union, it is an act of courage,’’ Lang said.

The percentage of Boston hospitality workers in unions has increased from 42 percent in 1998 to 61 percent today, Lang said. Nationwide, overall union membership has decreased from 24 percent of all workers in 1973 to 12 percent last year, according to Unionstats.com, a website run by two economics professors, from Georgia State University and Trinity University. Among US hotel employees, the percentage of union membership is just over 8 percent.

Katie Johnston Chase can be reached at johnstonchase@globe.com.