Hotel Union’s New Program Stirs Concern
Unite Here, the hospitality industry’s primary labor union, unveiled a new organization Wednesday that will warn meeting planners of potential contract disputes and help them find labor-friendly hotels.
The program, called Informed Meetings Exchange, or Inmex, already has more than 100 subscribers representing about $200 million in annual hotel expenditures, union officials said. Members include the NAACP, Sierra Club and San Jose Convention & Visitors Bureau.
“We are providing groups and associations on a wide scale the information they need to determine whether a particular hotel company is taking a positive or negative approach toward its employees,” said Unite Here hospitality division President John Wilhelm. “We think the impact on the hotel industry over time will be huge.”
But industry officials called Inmex a ploy by Unite Here to increase membership and said they would closely monitor the information being distributed.
The organization is drawing criticism from the hotel industry amid labor negotiations with Unite Here in several major cities. The union orchestrated contracts to expire this year in a number of major cities -- Los Angeles, Toronto, New York, Boston, Chicago and Honolulu -- leading to a powerful threat of a nationwide strike. In Los Angeles alone, there are more than 5,000 union workers at 25 hotels.
“They want to become an organization that diverts meetings from nonunion to union hotels,” said Joseph A. McInerney, president of the American Hotel & Lodging Assn. “Their objective really is to tarnish the reputation and financially hurt the major hotels that don’t agree during negotiations with some of the issues they want, which in some cities is joining the union.”
McInerney said he didn’t believe that Inmex would provide balanced information to meeting planners, based on Unite Here’s past practices. For example, McInerney said, initial information about Inmex didn’t reveal the connection to the labor union.
Wilhelm denied that Inmex was designed to help increase membership. Instead, he said there had been broad interest in the program from associations besides labor groups.
Although Inmex was created by Unite Here, union officials said Inmex was an independent nonprofit organization with its own board of directors. It is housed at Unite Here’s New York headquarters, and the two organizations share staff.
Member associations will be able to call an Inmex meeting planner for assistance in site selection, cost analysis and contract negotiations. Associations will also have access to up-to-date information regarding labor issues as well as lists of union and nonunion hotels, Inmex meeting planner Sekeno Aldred said.
John Stephens, executive director of the American Studies Assn. and chairman of Inmex’s board, said his organization’s annual conference attracts 2,000 attendees who spend $1.2 million on hotel services.
“We sought to meet in communities where our dollars make a positive contribution,” Stephens said. Now, there is a mechanism “to guarantee we’re living our values” through spending on meetings and travel, he said.
