Late last year, Nicole Howard was laid off when Montgomery Ward went bankrupt. In the spring, she happily found a new job cleaning rooms at Chicago's venerable Palmer House Hilton Hotel. But on September 14, she says, her boss "just told me that because of what happened on September 11, they had to lay people off," and another job was gone. A 32-year-old former welfare recipient, Howard was ineligible for unemployment insurance because she hadn't worked long enough, and she and her 15-year-old daughter were soon evicted from their rented room and forced to live with relatives. Now, since some high-seniority room attendants voluntarily cut their hours to share the work, she gets called back for an occasional day's employment, but "I'm borrowing money, and I don't know how I can pay it back," she says. "Why do they deny unemployment [compensation] when it was nobody's fault that they lost their jobs?"
In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the mostlylow-to-moderate-income workers in the hospitality-and-tourism business havesuffered more layoffs than have employees in any industry (other than allmanufacturing combined)--at least 135,000, according to an AFL-CIO tabulation.Even the transportation industry has lost fewer jobs. Both the personal hardshipand the social impact have been especially severe since the industry is a leadingemployer of recent immigrants, former welfare mothers, and inner-city residents,who have few resources for cushioning the economic blow. The currentstripped-down programs of unemployment compensation and social welfare in thiscountry will do little to help.
The job losses also hurt the feisty Hotel Employees and Restaurant EmployeesUnion (HERE), which estimates that of its 265,000 members nationwide, as many as30 percent were laid off sometime after September 11. Many more are workingreduced hours, the union says. And despite help from other unions and theAFL-CIO, HERE itself has had to lay off nearly one-fifth of its staff and cut thesalaries of the remainder by up to 20 percent.
Under president John W. Wilhelm, HERE has pursuedone of the most aggressiveorganizing programs in the country. The union currently spends more than 40percent of its budget on organizing and remains committed, despite its financialproblems, to raising that to 50 percent over the next few years. "I'm determinedthat we're not going to reduce organizing efforts," Wilhelm says. "I thinkthere's a better-than-even chance this period will end up stimulating organizing.I don't underestimate the difficulty of getting through this period, but if ourresponse to crisis is to stop, we might as well close up shop."
Yet for the past two months, the union at all levels has been mainly focusedon helping the victims of the crisis, starting with the families of the 43 HEREmembers killed in the Windows on the World restaurant at the top of the WorldTrade Center and the roughly 1,150 other hotel-and-restaurant workers who losttheir jobs in the buildings that were destroyed. Then there are those laid off asa result of the public's subsequent travel fears, which hit especially hard inNew York, San Francisco, and Las Vegas--as well as in Washington, D.C., where thePentagon attack, airport closing, and anthrax scares knocked four-fifths of HEREmembers out of their jobs.
In most cities, HERE has set up one-stop assistance centers to provideinformation--as well as translation services for new immigrants--to members andoften to nonunion hotel and restaurant workers. Locals have arranged for creditadvice, psychological counseling, legal aid, emergency food, and rent assistance.In New York, HERE and other hotel unions pledged $2 million to help affectedmembers from three destroyed hotels pay for their health insurance, and theyorganized their still-employed members to share work and income with thosedisplaced. In addition to raising $700,000 for family assistance, HERE Local 100,representing New York restaurant workers, persuaded many employers not to lay offworkers precipitously. The local also fought government bureaucracies on behalfof the families of undocumented immigrant workers, including 15 of the unionemployees of Windows on the World who perished in the attack. (Its successesincluded winning Social Security death benefits for these workers' children afterthe government denied benefits to spouses.) In the District of Columbia, HERE leda fight for unemployment-insurance reform--and obtained higher benefits, longercoverage, and no waiting period.
The massive layoffs are unavoidably making HERE's work harder on many fronts.And since hotel-and-restaurant business slows in many cities during the winter,the union worries that despite a modest rebound in late October, job losses couldcontinue to mount in the coming months. Among other ill effects, that would makethings tough for negotiators of crucial contracts that are expiring within thenext year in Hawaii, Boston, Las Vegas, and Chicago. If necessary, Wilhelm says,the union will negotiate one-year contracts or strike other special bargains tomake sure that the temporary recession does not depress needed pay raises forlong.
Meanwhile, HERE is energetically pushing for federal legislation to extend andraise unemployment benefits and to pay the health-insurance premiums of laid-offworkers. Workers are entitled by law to keep their insurance for 18 months ifthey pay the premium, but the average price is about $600 a month, and the unionsays few can afford that. Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana has proposedlegislation that would pay 75 percent of the laid-off workers' health-insurancepremiums, but for those with low or no unemployment benefits, that's not likelyto be enough.
Wilhelm persuaded the hotel industry, including CEOs of dogmaticallyanti-union firms like Marriott and Loews, to join him in lobbying for theexpanded federal benefits, and he agreed to lobby for industry proposals,including temporary tax credits for travel miles and temporary relief of payrolltaxes for both employers and employees. Economic Policy Institute economistChristian Weller, who has studied stimulus policies, doubts that these measureswould provide much incentive for travel or job preservation. Wilhelm, however,defends the incentives as temporary measures that might create needed jobs andargues that cooperation with the companies now may help the union later. "I don'tthink that the fact that we're facing a terrorist war is going to do away withclass differences in the country," says Henry Tamarin, general vice president ofHERE, "but if there's the basis of a relationship, it may be easier to hear whateach side is saying and find common ground."
Little common ground is apparent right now at many hotels. Despite cooperationat one level, lots of employers are seeking their own advantage in the currentcrisis by increasing workloads, cutting services (and the workers who performthem), and increasing the proportion of part-time workers. In Las Vegas, where8,000 of HERE's 46,000 union members were laid off and as many as 3,000 moreforced to work reduced hours, business has bounced back somewhat, but unionmembers have not been called back in numbers "proportional to the business that'sreturned," according to Local 226's staff director, D. Taylor. "I think thecompanies have been more concerned about Wall Street quarterly reports than theworkloads, and they're trying to get two to three jobs out of each worker." Inresponse, the local has organized delegations of workers to confront hotelmanagers, distributed "coupons" that say "Where's my second paycheck?" or "Oneperson, one job" for overworked employees to give to supervisors, and filedhundreds of grievances.
Some employers may be targeting union activists. Although the revenue fromhis shift hadn't declined, 40-year-old Darryl Narro, a bartender at the HolidayInn Chicago-Mart Plaza and an outspoken union loyalist, was told that he wasbeing laid off because of the economy. "They made cutbacks because of my strongaffiliation with the union and my challenges to their policies," he angrilycharges. In Santa Monica, California, the city council passed an ordinancedesigned to prevent local hotels from using the economic slump as an excuse toretaliate against workers who supported a successful initiative last yearrequiring businesses in the city's tourism district to pay a living wage.
There is a good chance that publicity about the deprivations faced byhardworking immigrants--including undocumented workers who are being denied eventhe most elementary public assistance--will spur new sympathy for such measuresand for HERE's ongoing efforts on behalf of immigrant workers' rights. But thepanic about terrorism has dampened prospects for the comprehensive immigrationreform that the union had been promoting. Wilhelm calls this "outrageous." As hesays: "Those planes weren't crashed into buildings by immigrants but bycriminals." Besides, he notes, the workers at Windows on the World came from 37countries. And the terrorists didn't ask for their papers before launching theattack.
