Queen Elizabeth Hotel locks out unionized employees

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The Fairmount Queen Elizabeth Hotel locked out its employees at 6 a.m. Wednesday after the union rejected a contract proposal.

Outside the hotel, a few dozen workers gathered with flags and urns of coffee.

The hotel has closed its restaurants and bars, but is still offering breakfast to guests. Daily room cleaning remains available, general manager David Connor told The Gazette, but he said he couldn’t guarantee whether that would remain the case should the lockout continue.

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Both sides are pointing to the fact that 17 other hotels have reached contract agreements as evidence that the other side isn’t negotiating in good faith.

Connor said the lockout was necessary after months of unsuccessful negotiations and multiple strikes.

“It’s just very disappointing. We’ve been working very hard on this. We’ve been very serious to take care of our staff … so that we can take care of our clients,” Connor said.

As a result of the multiple strikes and now this lockout, the hotel has reduced its capacity, Connor said, because the 85 managers can’t fully fill in for the approximately 550 unionized workers.

The hotel “would sooner manage its contingency plan and lose revenue than come to the table and find solutions to problems and offer the same resolution that we have at 17 other hotels,” said Alexandre Laviolette, president of the CSN Fédération du commerce, which represents workers across several industries, including 4,000 Quebec hotel workers.

Workers are behind union negotiators, Laviolette said, pointing to the 94 per cent of members who rejected the latest contract offer.

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The union has accused management of bringing in non-unionized workers, or scabs, an accusation the hotel denies.

Management and the union have agreed on many points of the contract, including pay increases of 10 per cent in the first year and 21 per cent over the life of the four-year contract. But sticking points remain around the use of outside agencies to fill in for unionized staff and the workload for housekeepers.

Connor said that although 17 other Quebec hotels have settled contract talks with nearly identical contracts, the Queen Elizabeth is the only hotel insisting on a right to call in agencies.

He said that was necessary, given the hotel’s 950-room capacity.

“We are 300 rooms bigger than the next biggest hotel,” in Quebec, Connor said.

The size of the hotel makes for significant fluctuations in the number of guests, meaning some weeks require far more staff than others, he said. Connor argued that creates a need to have agencies on call should permanent workers be unavailable. That allowance has been in place for previous contracts, he said, and outlines strict rules for when the hotel can seek outside workers.

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“We cannot bring in an agency anytime we want. We typically have them for housekeeping and for culinary only when all of our staff have been scheduled, all of our staff have been offered overtime.”

Laviolette said the union doesn’t buy the argument. “It’s not true that they couldn’t operate,” without the placement agencies, he said.

There is also disagreement over the number of rooms one housekeeper should have to clean. While the union wants that number capped at 11, the hotel is asking for 13 rooms during the high season and 14 rooms during the low season.

A smaller cap is needed, Laviolette said, because housekeepers have been overworked since the hotel’s 2017 renovation.

“It’s a big workload. There have been work accidents, injuries,” he said.

Hotel accused of relying on scabs

The hotel has brought in illegal strikebreakers to replace unionized workers during past strikes, said Pierre-André Champoux, a CSN mobilization adviser who co-ordinates actions with Queen Elizabeth workers.

The accusation is before the province’s labour tribunal, he said, but he said he was confident that the hotel has relied on scabs. “We saw it.”

He said the scab workers include management brought in after contract negotiations began and are doing union-assigned work, outside agency workers and union-level employees who aren’t members of the union.

Connor denied the accusation. “We did not hire outside people. We did not bring in people that were not allowed to work.”

The labour ministry interviewed people working at the hotel during a strike over the summer, he said.

Management has come on since the beginning of negotiations, Connor said, but they are not performing contractually union work.

Laviolette said the union was being careful not to take too strong a position while investigations continue.

But, “based on the information I have, there are scabs in that hotel.”

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