New Orleans
hospitality workers deserve a chance to own their own homes, send
their children to college and get the health care and retirement security
they need. They deserve to earn a livable, above-poverty wage after
working a 40 hour work week.
Joining together in unions offers hope for that kind of future and
gives workers a real voice on the job.
Workers in unions have an advantage. Nationally, union workers earn
34 percent more each week, on average, than nonunion workers.
Through
collective bargaining, unions emphasize equality in the workplace
and close the wage gaps that disadvantage women and people of color.
Union contracts raise earnings by 40 percent for working women and
by 44 percent for African Americans nationally. In addition,
with a union, everyone can have the right to earn one of the good
jobs through a job-bidding process guaranteed in a legal contract.
Working families have better benefits with a union. Workers with unions
are much more likely to have health care and twice as likely to have
guaranteed pensions.
The union advantage is clear in the hospitality industry as well.
Union housekeepers in New York make $15.24 an hour. That's 40 percent
more than the average for New York housekeepers and 178 percent more
than the $5.48 an hour New Orleans housekeepers make. Union housekeepers
in Boston make 43 percent more than the average for Boston housekeepers
and in Washington, D.C. they make 25 percent more. All of these cities
compete with New Orleans for convention dollars.
Union members also have a way to work together to solve problems on
the job and to improve quality and productivity. When MGM Grand Hotel
workers in Las Vegas won their union, for example, the employees and
management started a joint committee to look into problems at work.
One of its first decisions was to establish an on-site child care
facility to serve the workers' family needs.
