A Letter from HTC President Rich Maroko
August 22, 2024 7:11 PM
Six new business agents. A mobile app for contract enforcement. The debut of the “electronic business agent.” A new Midtown Health Center. An expansion of the Queens Health Center. Access to CityMD. 65 New Union Contracts. Brand-New Child Care and Housing Funds. The largest wage increases in any renewal contract in our Union’s history.
In early 2023, I laid out a bold plan for the future of our Union. Ever since, we’ve been hard at work, taking our Union from one of the best in the country to the next level.
During my first 2 and ½ years as President, our Union navigated the challenges of the pandemic – from winning millions in severance pay, to negotiating healthcare extensions and safety protocols, to working with our political allies to reopen your hotels and secure more financial relief for laid off members.
But by the start of 2023, we were finally able to refocus our attention on the future. As you may recall, we introduced a strategic plan for how to improve dozens of areas of our Union’s operation – from the way we enforce our contracts, to how we take on bad employers. For the past 18 months, we have been working to make that vision a reality.
I want to share just some of that progress with you now, focusing on the work that we’ve been doing to become even stronger at contract enforcement, win even better contracts, improve your healthcare, expand the services we provide for members, and grow in the greater region.
Stronger contract enforcement
Fighting to improve the lives of workers in New York and New Jersey’s hospitality and gaming industries – that’s our Union’s core mission. The main way we achieve this mission is by negotiating improved wages, benefits, rights, and protections in a legally binding contract – and then enforcing those rights.
When it comes to contract enforcement, we’re already one of the strongest unions out there. Not many unions have a dedicated staff of business agents whose sole job is to represent members and enforce their contracts. Our enforcement team closes thousands of cases each year – and brings hundreds more to arbitration.
But, I believe that we can become even stronger. To start, we are in the process of rolling out 6 new initiatives aimed at improving contract enforcement at every step of the process – from when you first speak to your delegate about an issue to when an arbitrator issues their final ruling.
Starting with a new delegate training program. In July, we launched new classes for the union members who’ve stepped up to provide the first line of defense in enforcing our contracts: our Union’s delegates.
The initial five classes cover the nuts and bolts of our contracts, the grievance and arbitration process, and the law – and will arm our delegates with more tools and knowledge to use in their next grievance meeting. The first training classes reached capacity quickly – with several hundred delegates enrolling. More dates will be available this fall, including new trainings for GRIWA delegates.
We’re hiring more Business Agents and growing our team in order to create smaller assignments and allow each BA to focus on representing a smaller group of members.
We created the role of Grievance Officer – a position designed to shepherd cases through the grievance process effectively. By filling this role, we have already sped up the mediation and arbitration process by roughly 70%.
That’s not all. We’re taking more steps to accelerate the pace that cases are heard at the arbitrator’s office. Arbitration is the final step in the life of a grievance. When all else fails, we have the right to bring a disciplinary action or contractual violation before an arbitrator, who will issue a legally binding ruling.
Our legal team aggressively litigates hundreds of cases before our panel of arbitrators every year. And while that process is exponentially faster than the court system, the sheer number of cases our Union brings can create a backlog. So, we have added arbitrators to our panel, increased the number of hearing slots by 25%, and adjusted scheduling procedures to prevent delays.
The contract itself can make enforcement easier. By creating financial disincentives, we can discourage management from violating the contract or engaging in delay tactics in the first place. During recent negotiations, we’ve upped these disincentives for bad actors.
And finally, we are creating two revolutionary tech-based tools. The first is a new program that we’re calling the “electronic business agent” or “e-BA”. Last year, we negotiated with management to upload mountains of payroll and scheduling data every week. We’ve now programmed the e-BA to use artificial intelligence to analyze this raw data and catch grievances such as wage, overtime, premium pay, and night shift differential violations. The e-BA will send alerts when it identifies a potentialviolation so that a Business Agent can investigate and address it with management.
The second is a new mobile app that we’re calling “Casebook”, which will give our enforcement staff – including the BAs, their Supervisors, the Grievance Officer, and attorneys – real-time access to all the information that they need about a case, including the evidence, the case history, the contract language, and the parties. It will also ensure that cases are processed faster, by sending reminders if milestones aren’t met in a timely manner and automating the scheduling of next steps.
We’re winning even better contracts
When I first announced our strategic plan, we were months away from major negotiations for the GRIWA and Upstate Casino contracts. Those negotiations were tough – and made even tougher by the fact that the industry was just getting back on its feet after the pandemic. In the end, we left the bargaining table with the best renewal contracts in our Union’s history – with record-breaking wage increases, improvements to paid time off, and brand-new funds to help our members with the rising cost of child care and housing.
And remarkably, we did it without a strike or a picket line. That’s because we had been strategizing and working tirelessly to create the leverage we would need for over fifteen years, from the moment our Union first expanded into New Jersey, Westchester, Long Island, and Upstate. Our strategy involved organizing the non-union industry outside of NYC, building a local political program to pass laws that would both protect our members jobs and increase our power at the bargaining table, and negotiating the region’s first-ever master contract: the GRIWA.
The GRIWA and Upstate Casino contracts weren’t the only new contracts we won - we secured excellent new contracts for nearly 4,000 members since the pandemic. At many of these hotels, casinos, and clubs, management fought us every step of the way. Our power over the industry, high density, engaged membership, and political power were enough to make just the threat of a fight terrifying enough for management to sign our contracts.
The full list of new contracts is published on page 17. Among the names are the William Vale, where workers endured not one, but two anti-union campaigns and government run elections. We also negotiated contracts for twenty Local 6 Clubs, where our newly assembled Club Contract Fight Team has been working to standardize and improve club contracts.
We’ve finished consolidating the 2023 GRIWA and the 2012 and 2015 IWA. These consolidated agreements will make it easier for our union delegates and members to know their rights and enforce the contracts. You can expect to see organizers and business agents distributing the contracts in your employee cafeteria soon.
We’re making major improvements to our healthcare
Coming out of the pandemic, we’ve part- nered with the Funds to launch various innovations that will reduce patient wait times, expand benefits, and provide the highest quality care for our members and their families.
First, the Funds are beginning renovations that will modernize and expand the Queens Health Center, our most popular location. The health center will take over the space currently used by the Industry Training Fund, adding over 20 new exam rooms and expanding the pharmacy, radiology, optometry, specialists, and physical therapy clinical area. This expansion will allow the Funds to hire more doctors and specialists in an ongoing effort to reduce patient wait times.
The Funds are also in the process of pur- chasing a new Midtown Health Center. The brand-new facility is located on 6th Avenue and 20th Street. The new facility will not only be beautifully remodeled but have more space available for patient rooms, allowing the Funds to hire more staff and reduce appointment wait times. Take a look on page 14.
That’s not all. Over the last 18 months, the Benefit Funds have negotiated new partnerships to improve access and care including with CityMD, expanded Health Center hours, hired over 500 medical staff, improved pharmacy operations, and built a new oral surgery suite. Read all about it on page 12.
Supporting you beyond the job
We also set out to expand the assistance that our Union can provide members – beyond the work that we already do every day to represent you on the job. This goal led us to launch various new initiatives including a free job training program, efforts to help our members with the rising cost of child care and housing, and a U.S. citizenship drive.
The problems we’re tackling are national and decades in the making. We need to look for solutions from every angle: through our contract, our political power, and partnerships with our allies in the labor movement, academia, and the non-profit world.
First, we’re doing what we do best: negotiating new contract language. In the 2023 GRIWA, we created brand new child care and housing funds that will be funded by the employer. Once the contributions reach a substantial enough level, we will be able to begin providing benefits. It’s my hope that we’ll be able to expand these funds beyond the GRIWA.
We’re also joining forces with our allies to pass meaningful legislation. In 2023, we worked with a coalition of New York unions to increase the income limits for state subsidies to help pay for child care. As of today, our members have qualified for over $456,000 in support. Earlier this year, we took some significant first steps to reform New York City’s housing market. Standing together with our allies in the labor movement, we successfully lobbied for “good cause” requirements if a landlord wants to evict a tenant and we won rights for tenants to challenge unreasonable rent hikes.
We’ve also found partners who are researching and providing direct support on these same issues. Read more on page 20.
In other exciting news, our Industry Training Program, funded by employer contributions through the contract, is standing-up a training program for table games ahead of 2025, when New York State is expected to award three new licenses for new casinos downstate. By training our members, they’ll have a shot at what promise to be thousands of excellent jobs.
Growing in GRIWA
Our Union’s growth in Northern New Jersey, Upstate New York and in the gaming industry has increased our membership by nearly 50% over the last 15 years. As we’ve grown, we’ve needed to create the culture that has made our Union a powerhouse: tough contract enforcement, political action, and an army of member volunteers.
This has meant – beyond negotiating strong contracts – we’ve had to hire and assign more staff to the greater region, increase visits by union reps, mobilize members to volunteer, and raise our density in the greater region by organizing non-union hotels.
Stay tuned
The innovations I’ve shared today are just the start. As I write this, even more plans are underway to improve other aspects of our Union’s operations. Our Communications team is redeveloping our website hotelworkers.org. We’re expanding delegate trainings to GRIWA delegates and Spanish-speakers this fall. Our HEAT department is preparing to recruit a new round of rank-and-file union activists. Our organizers are weeks away from going public with another bottom-up organizing drive.
We’re also pushing for new legislation that will protect workers in the industries where we work. As I write this, we are rallying behind legislation that will improve conditions in the hotel industry and provide some of the safety protections that we’ve won in our contracts to all hotel workers.
We’ve dedicated the pages of this Hotel Voice to share even more about what we’re doing with a focus, for now, on our work to become even stronger at contract enforcement, negotiate even better contracts, constantly improve our medical care, expand services for members, and grow our power outside of New York City. I look forward to continuing to update you all as each of these projects and plans come to life.
In solidarity,
Rich Maroko
HTC President
