First 3 days of negotiations in Puerto Rico

Three days of extremely slow and contentious contract negotiations between the Union and Hilton have yielded some significant progress, but have also made clear that the road to a final agreement will be very difficult.

On Saturday, management walked out of the negotiations early (around 4:15 P.M., even though negotiations were scheduled to go to 7:00 P.M.) and failed to deliver on its promise to provide the Union with its own contract proposals after the lunch break. In response, the Union members at the negotiations (about 100 of them) decided to have a short impromptu demonstration in front of the Condado Plaza to send management a message.

The negotiations scheduled for Sunday were cancelled at management's request so that they would be able to examine the Union's proposals and prepare their own. Corporate representatives also arrived on the island Sunday, hopefully, to play a part in the negotiations.

Local 610 President Felix Mejias summed up the situation this way: "We knew these negotiations would be hard for two reasons.

First, the Union is determined to restore the balance of power with management which we knew would be a heavy lift. Second, many of the key managers desperately want to keep the Union and the employees under their thumb."

Hundreds of members have attended the negotiations and the Union strongly urges every member to attend whenever possible.

That's the best way to know what's going on. It is also very important that as many members as possible attend negotiations to show management that they support the Union and are ready to fight, if necessary, for a good contract

. The next bargaining session is scheduled for Monday, September 14. This issue of the newsletter is entirely devoted to giving members some of the highlights of the negotiations so far.

Some (but not enough) important progress

On Friday, the second day of negotiations, management agreed to Union proposal number U01 "Grievance and Arbitration," the Union's most important non-economic proposal.

Currently, the Union's power to enforce the contract is severely handicapped. The existing grievance and arbitration process is slow and cumbersome, and heavily rigged against the Union. Members sometimes wait years for their cases to be heard and decided. The Union is only permitted to arbitrate very limited issues, and it even loses the right to file cases if it does not file within very strict time limits.

The arbitrator has little power to remedy many types of contract violations. As a result of all of these factors, management routinely and frequently violates the contract, and views the threat of arbitration as a joke.

Under the proposal that management accepted on Friday, the Union will have the right to arbitrate virtually any unfair action by management. The Union will be able to file arbitrations at any time, and the process will be much faster. A permanent panel of three arbitrators has been agreed to, thereby ensuring that the arbitrators will be familiar with the local industry, contract interpretation decisions will have more consistency, and the time-consuming process of selecting an arbitrator for each case will be eliminated. In addition, the arbitrator will have far more authority to punish management for willful violations of the contract. Management will have something to lose in arbitration and, if it's case is not good, an incentive to reach an equitable settlement of grievances with the Union. The new grievance and arbitration procedure is based on the one that serves Local 6 members in New York City hotels, which is widely recognized as the "Cadillac" of union grievance systems.

Management has also agreed to Union Proposal number U04 "Union Visitation," which greatly strengthens and broadens the rights of Union representatives to have access to the hotel's premises to investigate possible contract violations and to meet and communicate with union members. The proposal also imposes strong penalties on management if it violates union visitation rights (as it has often done in the past).

Management has also agreed to Union Proposal number UXX "Dignity and Respect," which, in conjunction with the new grievance procedure, will greatly strengthen the Union's ability to prevent and correct disrespectful or abusive behavior by managers. Management has also agreed to Union Proposal number UXX "Official Language," which designates Spanish as the governing language of the contract.

Though it is true that management has agreed to some of the Union's most important proposals, it has also rejected a number of essential ones. For example, management refuses to afford union delegates customary protections against retaliatory discipline. In all three hotels, managers have a habit of using disciplinary actions to intimidate employees who raise grievances. Management also insists on having the right to censor Union literature posted on the Union bulletin boards. Management also continues to refuse to agree to the Union's proposal number U02 "Right to Information," which ensures the Union's ability to obtain information needed to properly enforce the contract.

Asked why the proposals management has agreed to are not sufficient, Local 6 attorney Rich Maroko explained: "It's true that four solid walls are essential elements when you build a house, but if you don't also build a roof, then you don't have a house.

Management has not yet agreed to enough of the basic contract rights essential for the union to be able to do its job representing its members."

Management also continues to stubbornly refuse to correct intolerable (and even illegal) behavior by many of its managers (including a few of the H.R. Directors sitting at the bargaining table), or to remedy the clear-cut injustices the Union has documented.

An important thing union members inclined to optimism need to remember is that no individual proposals management agrees to during the negotiations are final or binding in the absence of an agreement on the entire contract.