Union members at the W Hotel in Montreal are on strike this weekend

About 100 unionized workers at the W Hotel in Montreal went on strike Saturday for the entire weekend.

The Syndicat des travailleuses et travailleurs de W Hôtel Montréal, affiliated with the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), reported that the strike began at 9 a.m. on Saturday due to “the employer’s closure in recent days.”

“We’ve had 15 rounds of negotiations, and the employer is no longer showing any real willingness to settle. So we’ve reached this point, we want to increase the pressure, and our members are mobilized and united behind us in our mandate to settle and reach a tentative agreement,” said union president Raphaël Gouin-Loubert in a telephone interview.

Union members also held a one-day strike last Monday after voting to use a 120-hour strike bank at the appropriate time on July 31.

The workers represented by the W Hotel union include those who work in the restaurant and kitchen, housekeeping and front desk employees, as well as valet ambassadors, Gouin-Loubert said.

The union has been negotiating with the employer for six months, and wages are the main issue in the discussions. A round of negotiations is scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

Gouin-Loubert hopes to see more openness from the employer during these negotiations. “The employer’s current offers are clearly insufficient compared to other comparable hotels offering the same level of luxury and grandeur,” he said, without revealing the exact figures.

“In the CSN hotel industry negotiations, the other unions obtained at least 21% over four years. We are far from that here. The workers at W Hotel Montreal want the same thing. We will support them so that they get what they want,” said Serge Monette, president of the Fédération du commerce-CSN, in a press release.

The management of the Marriott chain, which owns the hotel, did not return The Canadian Press’ call.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews