After two years of struggle, hospitality workers at the Trump hotel in Las Vegas have won a four year contract that yields significant wage hikes, improved working conditions, family healthcare benefits, pensions, and – most important – job security.
The 525 workers are members of Culinary Workers Local 226 and Bartenders Local 165, both affiliates of UNITE HERE.
Under the agreement, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will drop its charges against the Trump corporation for breaking labor laws and the corporation will drop its court suit against the NLRB.
Culinary Workers Local 226 Communications Director Bethany Khan said contract terms will bring the Trump Las Vegas workers – housemaids, porters, waiters, cooks and bartenders—in line with their colleagues at other unionized hotels on the Las Vegas strip. Most of the Trump workers are minority-group members and women.
Before settling, Trump’s managers has paid a “consultant” – a union-buster — $500,000 to coordinate an anti-union drive.
“Him being president or not president, he’s still our boss,” Las Vegas housekeeper Eleuteria Blanco told The Washington Post. “We beat him twice legally. He need[ed] to sit down and negotiate our contract.”
Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., the Trump corporation agreed not to interfere with a union organizing drive among the employees of a new Trump hotel located just three blocks from the White House.
The drive is being led by UNITE HERE Local 25. The corporation agreed to recognize the local as the collective bargaining representative of its employees if the majority sign cards stating they want to join the union.
That hotel, a redevelopment of the historic Old Post Office building, is a center of controversy for several reasons: Lobbyists and representatives of foreign countries, eager to curry favor with Trump, have rented expensive rooms and staged expensive events there, ignoring the pro-union and anti-Trump demonstrators who have been picketing the hotel.
Also, the hotel sits on Pennsylvania Avenue and the inaugural parade will pass it. D.C. officials have yet to decide on whether to bar protesters there.
Furthermore, a provision in Trump’s lease of the building bars “any federal official” from profiting from the hotel. Trump has yet to announce whether or not he will honor this provision.
Local 25 Executive Director John Boardman said, “The agreement … satisfies the union’s goal to represent and ensure strong working conditions for hospitality workers in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. …”
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