Dismissed Hispanic Employees Manage to Get Jobs Back

[Rosi Carrasco]

Dismissed Hispanic Employees Manage to Get Jobs Back

CHICAGO – Close to 50 Latino workers in a luxury hotel in suburban Chicago are close to getting their jobs back after being fired, thanks to the intervention of a Hispanic leader who taught them their rights and how to defend them.

The story began last November when the Wyndham Glenview Suites changed owners and the new management decided to lay off 56 employees.

Though they were members of a union, the employees, surprised by their rapid dismissal, had no idea what to do.

But when they met Martin Unzueta, organizer and labor law expert, things started changing in their favor.

Now, 10 months later, half of the employees have gone back to work and it is expected that after a meeting of the hotel owners and the National Labor Relations Board, the other half will get their jobs back too.

Unzueta, born in Mexico City and founder of Chicago Community and Workers Rights, told Efe that his first meeting with the employees was by chance.

One of the employees called a Hispanic radio station to ask for anyone who could help them, and an announcer gave him Unzueta’s telephone number.

Soon the hotel employees were telling Unzueta how they lost their jobs.

“They put us in groups of 15 or 20 and asked which of us were in the union,” an employee said. “When we raised our hands, they told us we were all dismissed.”

At the CCWR organization, Unzueta concluded that the employees needed to know their rights and make their union file a complaint with the NLRB.

To be sure the employees were aware of their rights, Unzueta told Efe that he invited them to a series of workshops.

“Many Hispanics in the country don’t know their rights even though they’re citizens,” Unzueta said. “Though many Hispanics have citizenship, that doesn’t mean they know their rights.”

After the workshops, Unzueta, 56, told the dismissed employees: “Go back to the union and don’t leave there until the union files a complaint with the NLRB.”

The employees then got their union, Unite Here Local 450, to file a complaint for discrimination and contract violation with the NLRB.

But it wasn’t easy – it still took months for the employees to learn how to defend their rights.

Despite freezing temperatures, the employees under Unzueta’s direction gathered in front of the hotel last winter to stage their protests.

Finally, when the NLRB accepted the employees’ complaint, the company was forced to show good faith and agreed to give their jobs back to half of the 56 who had been laid off.

By Aug. 19, when there will be another meeting of employees and management coordinated by the NLRB, the company will take back the rest of the Hispanics.

The employees told Efe that they have learned some important lessons in the process.

“Previously we had no idea what it meant to belong to a union,” Rodrigo Martinez, who has been working in the hotel for 20 years, said.

“Before this we were all disunited and it was every man for himself,” Martinez, 46, said.

For Unzueta, this was not a case in which the company would want to check the employees’ status – what it wanted was to bypass the union altogether and bring in its own team.

“In this case the company couldn’t care less whether the employees had a Green Card or were citizens,” the activist said. “All that interested them was to discriminate.”

“When workers are unionized, no boss can bypass a collective bargaining agreement and say that everybody’s fired, I’ve got another team,” Unzueta said, adding that on Oct. 4 both sides will sit down to negotiate a new contract. EFE.