Unionized workers at Queen Elizabeth Hotel adopt strike mandate

Unionized workers at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal have adopted a strike mandate.

The mandate is for a 120-hour or five-day strike, which can be broken down into hours or days as required. The 600 or so workers, members of a union belonging to the CSN-affiliated Fédération du commerce, adopted the mandate by a margin of 95 per cent.

This vote is the first in a series scheduled to take place at other hotels in the Montreal, Quebec City, Eastern Townships and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean regions, as part of the coordinated negotiations being held by the Fédération du commerce in the hotel industry.

Union members at the Hotel Bonaventure, also in downtown Montreal, are also due to vote on the strike mandate on July 11.

Other unions at the hotels concerned will be asked to vote on the same 120-hour strike mandate in the coming weeks. It is already planned that those who have not yet settled will hold a joint one-day walkout in August.

This coordinated negotiation will ultimately involve 30 hotels in the four regions. As collective agreement expiry dates vary, so does the timing of the meetings.

The principle sought by the Fédération du commerce through this coordinated negotiation is to obtain an initial agreement with one employer and then try to reproduce it with other employers. The unions involved coordinate their negotiations and keep each other informed.

Asked this morning to comment on the strike vote, management at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel had not responded at the time of writing.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews