Fear of strikes clouds hot year for conventions

Boston is looking forward to what officials predict will be the best convention year the city has had in recent memory, but concerns about labor unrest threaten to darken the picture for hotels.

Labor contracts covering 4,000 union workers at 17 Boston area hotels are set to expire in November, and the major union representing hotel workers is this week launching a nationwide organizing campaign that could pressure nonunion hotels to improve benefits, working conditions, and wages in several cities.

''Within the convention industry, there is concern," said James Rooney, executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority who added that local officials were worried that Boston might see a reprise of the labor actions that shook the hotel industry in San Francisco in 2004. ''People saw what happened in San Francisco, where the union appealed to conventioneers about coming to town and asked them not to stay in hotels without a contract."

The national campaign kicked off this week with events in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago. In Boston, former US senator John Edwards and actor-activist Danny Glover are expected to speak to workers today during an event at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

Janice Loux, president of Hotel Workers Union Local 26, says she hopes contract talks will start early in Boston to avoid any unrest.

''We are not looking to strike," said Loux. ''We do not want a confrontation. We want to have constructive labor relations. We want to talk to the industry about lifting up those in the bottom half."

The Boston area is expected to have its best convention year since 2001, according to Matt Arrants, managing director of Pinnacle Advisory Group, a Boston consulting firm that researches the hospitality industry for investors. Revenues per available hotel room are projected to rise 10.6 percent over past year, Arrants said, to $145.16 per room.

Arrants credits the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in South Boston, as well as an uptick in leisure advertising, with making Boston and Cambridge more attractive destinations. In all, conventions will generate 263,000 room nights in those areas this year, up from 168,000 room nights in 2005, which should result in healthy profits.

Leaders of the 90,000-member UNITE HERE union began strategizing five years ago to align contract expiration dates. Boston is among 11 cities in the United States and Canada where 400 union hotel contracts are scheduled to expire this year. With contracts expiring in several cities, the union hopes to maximize its leverage over such major chains as the Hilton Hotels Corp., Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., and Marriott International. Officials from the chains were either unavailable or did not return requests for comment.

Robert J.S. Ross, a sociology professor at Clark University who has written extensively about unions, said the strategy may prove to be an effective way to bargain with big chains. A hotel operator in Boston may react differently to union demands at the negotiating table if hotel units in Los Angeles and New York are already facing protests. ''It is a strategic advantage for the union because it allows it to try to raise standards industrywide," said Ross.

Loux said Local 26 wants to negotiate better pensions, and equalize pay scales between Boston and New York. Housekeepers here earn $13.48 per hour. At New York hotels, they earn $19 per hour, she said.

David Noble, vice president of operations and external affairs at the Massachusetts Lodging Association, said he is hoping for labor peace in Boston. ''Negotiations have always worked out in the past, and we see no reason for that to be different this year," he said.

The national union drive, called ''Hotel Workers Rising," is designed ''to bring hotel workers who live in poverty into the middle class," according to Loux.

Still, some hotel officials say the union's main goal is to pressure nonunion hotels to remain neutral while it carries out ''card check" campaigns under which employers agree to let their workers bargain collectively after more than 50 percent sign up for a union.

Card check neutrality has been effective in Boston, where Local 26 expects to organize seven hotels under card check agreements in 2006 and 2007, bringing the total number of unionized hotels in the Boston area to 26. There are approximately 48 major hotels in the Boston area.

''The 'Hotel Workers Rising' campaign is less about improving workers' lives than about increasing union membership, which has been in decline for more than 40 years," said Joseph McInerney, president and chief executive of the American Hotel and Lodging Association in Washington, D.C.

Hotel officials aren't inclined to embrace card-check neutrality, he said. The issue was a key demand of labor leaders in San Francisco in 2004, when negotiations broke down and 4,000 hotel workers were barred from returning to work in 14 hotels. The workers eventually returned to the job without new contracts.

Loux estimates that 50 percent of the hotel industry's workers earn less than $9 per hour. The median pay for a hotel dishwasher in the United States is $7.41. She said hotel maids in Chicago, Boston, New York, and Los Angeles make $13 to $19 per hour, but nonunion workers make less.

McInerney said the union's contention that hotel workers are poorly paid is false.

''Comparing [wages in] New York to Phoenix is like comparing apples and oranges," he said. ''A person making $18,000 in Phoenix would need to make over $36,000 a year to live in New York."

Dina Dickinson, 64, of Winthrop, a housekeeper at the Hilton Hotel at Logan International Airport, said she hopes the year will bring changes that can provide a better retirement plan. Dickinson, a union member who earns $13.48 per hour, said she continues to work because Social Security would pay just $800 per month if she retired. Originally from northern Italy, she's worked at the hotel for 18 years but says she earns too little to contribute to its 401(k) plan.

''It's kind of tough when you just make a certain amount and the bills keep going up and up," she said.

Diane E. Lewis can be reached at dlewis@globe.com.