Ramada workers in Olympia laid off and sourced out! Sandra Miller attempts to bust union

author : Richard Sawyer topic : labor

by Richard Sawyer, Principal Officer, UNITE HERE! Local 8

The Ramada Inn Governor House is outsourcing Union jobs with affordable health and dental insurance to an outside company. With tactics looking like they were taken straight out of a handbook for Wal-Mart executives, Sandra Miller of the Ramada Inn Governor House in Olympia positions herself on the forefront of a race to the bottom in wages and benefits.

Instead of improving the last contract offer and providing workers with affordable health care and livable wages, the Ramada Inn Governor House Hotel laid off their food and beverage employees and will outsource Union jobs to an outside company.

Already the last and final offer presented to the worker's Union UNITE HERE! Local 8 during recent negotiations for a new contract was an insult to the hard-working restaurant staff, many of them loyal long-term employees. According to the management's proposal, most of the workers would have earned poverty wages just barely above minimum wage.

In a memorandum sent out to state legislators on June 10th, Sandra Miller claims the Ramada Inn Governor House is "offering above scale wages and benefits for our marketplace." An unbelievable exaggeration considering the fact that pantry cooks earned $7.48 per hour and a dishwasher's hourly earnings used to be minimum wage at $7.35. Wages at the nearby Red Lion Hotel were about $2.00 higher in almost every classification.

Sandra Miller's idea of dealing with increasing insurance costs was to completely eliminate the current affordable medical plan and replace it with a $2,500/$5,000 deductible health insurance plan. A worker making minimum wage could not afford to pay the first $2,500, even if the hotel contributed a small monthly amount to a health savings account. People do not get injured in a perfect calendar year, and any worker who had to pay back-to-back calendar year deductibles of $2,500 for themselves or $5,000 for their family could be forced into bankruptcy.

During negotiations with the Union, the possibility of laying off the restaurant workforce was never mentioned by company representatives. One has to assume, however, that plans to take such a major step were already in place at that time. The Union's demands in those negotiations were pretty moderate considering the Ramada Inn is one of the lowest paying hotels in the State of Washington. The company was asked to come up with a plan to slowly close the gap in wages to other hotels in the area and keep the current medical plan.

Instead of being responsive and negotiating in good faith, the company announced on June 15th, only 5 days after assuring state legislators that the company is doing their "best to be fair to the employees while balancing the health of the business", that all food and beverage employees would lose their jobs in July due to an "entrepreneurial decision".

As of this writing, the Ramada Inn Governor House restaurant has been closed "indefinitely". Closing the restaurant does not make a lot of economic sense and takes away desperately needed income and access to healthcare from 12 workers and their families. Instead of firing her employees, Sandra Miller could have taken a more productive approach to solve the problems she is facing with her restaurant.

The Olympian newspaper reviewed the hotel's Guberz restaurant on March 24th, awarding a devastating 1.5 of 5 possible stars. This should have been encouragement enough for Sandra Miller to work on improving the restaurant's performance. There are numerous ways to accomplish that, and all of them involve keeping existing jobs and even adding new ones. The Mon Ami Gabi Restaurant, a Union facility located inside the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, was rated no. 9 of the R&I Top 100 Independent Restaurants in the United States in 2004. Clearly the two locations cannot be compared directly, but the example shows that hotel restaurants can be run successfully while still providing good livable wages and good health benefits for its workers. Instead of being smart and improving the dining experience her restaurant has to offer together with her employees, Sandra Miller's way of being "fair" to her workers equals firing 12 people in order to increase profits for the company.

Besides this morally and economically questionable rationale, closing the restaurant could also serve another equally disturbing purpose. It is our strong suspicion that Sandra Miller's move is a very convenient pretense to get rid of a Union she has been opposing for many years. Already in 2001, Sandra Miller tried to start a decertification campaign against her front desk workers, who are part of the Teamsters Union. In a memorandum to employees she stated: "We don't believe that employees need the Teamsters or any other union to represent them. I think we'd all be better off without the union." This summer, her words were finally followed by actions. Outsourcing jobs as seen in this case is considered union busting by UNITE HERE! Local 8.

Employers like Sandra Miller put the health and vitality of the entire community at risk. Families lose their source of income and become part of the growing number of Americans who are uninsured, parents will have to work multiple jobs and therefore have less time for their children, and some of the workers will have to rely on the tax-paying community in form of unemployment benefits.

There should be no way Sandra Miller can set a precedent and get away with this kind of behavior. She is sending out a signal to other employers to do exactly the same thing. In order to make sure working families in Olympia do not lose their vital source of income, please support the workers in their struggle.

Send a letter of support for the workers to the hotel's general manager, Sandra Miller, and let her know that you are not willing to spend your hard-earned income at a hotel that tries to bust a Union and destroys the livelihood of working families just to increase profits. Send her an email to 198@hotel.cendant.com or send a Fax to (360) 943-9349.