Peter Ward and Local 6 administration are re-elected

Primaries around New York City and State weren't the only important elections that took place this week. Local 6 Business Manager Peter Ward and the Local 6 administration were re-elected to office by acclamation at a Delegate Assembly meeting on September 10. Ward and his team will serve a three-year term in office.

The Delegate Assembly meeting was open to all members of Local 6 for the nominations of officers. On hand to observe the nominations process were an independent monitor from Freeh, Sporkin and Sullivan, LLP and Marilin Falik, who was representing Election Services Solutions. Overseeing the nominations and election process was the Local 6 Election Committee, consisting of its Chairperson, Dorian Ross, and Anwar Ahmed, Dimitrios Theofanis, Julio Rivera and Gershon Resnick.

Ross explained the rules and procedures of the nominations process and then opened the floor for nominations. The administration's team, called the Local 6 Unity slate, was nominated by Jim Donovan, the President of Local 6. Donovan said: "Brothers and sisters, earlier this year Peter Ward negotiated the Union's Industry-Wide Agreement for the third time in his career. As a result, New York City hotel workers can go to sleep tonight knowing their health insurance, their pensions, their wage increases, their working conditions, their job security and their right to be respected by management are safe for another six years and 10 months."

The members present at the meeting soundly agreed.

"These are bad times," Donovan continued. "The standard of living of working people keeps falling. Many unions are shrinking in size and also shrinking from the fight. Crooked politicians, rolling in money, are scoring political points by calling public employees ââ¬Ëgreedy' and by stripping them of their right to bargain collectively. In these bad times for most working people, under the leadership of Peter Ward our Union has grown, our wages have risen, our contract standards have greatly improved. These successes by themselves are reason enough to re-elect Peter Ward."

Again, the members at the meeting strongly agreed. Then Donovan said, "But the future challenges we face are an even better reason to re-elect him."

Donovan reported that while the Union has organized 44 new hotels and 4,051 non-union workers in the last three years, overall density has decreased. He explained that this is due to many new non-union hotels opening in New York, a fact that poses a real threat to members of our Union and their families.

"Brothers and sisters, Peter Ward has led us to victory time and again," Donovan said in conclusion. "There is no one better qualified to lead us now and to prepare us to face the future."

Donovan then nominated Ward for Business Manager, along with the rest of the Local 6 officers. Members cheered every name. Donovan then proceeded to read off the entire Local 6 Unity slate. Following the nomination of the administration's slate of candidates, Local 6 Election Committee Chairperson Dorian Ross asked several times if there were any other slate nominations and then if there were any individual nominations. There were none. As a result, Ward and his administration were re-elected by acclamation, meaning that no other ââ¬Â¨candidates chose to run for office. The re-election by acclamation is a clear and powerful endorsement of the Local 6 administration by its membership.

As a result of the fact that there were no other candidates, Marilin Falik of Election Services Solutions cast a symbolic white ballot showing that the Local 6 administration had been reelected. The eligibility of all candidates on the administration's team and the eligibility of all the Local 6 members who seconded the slate's nomination were verified the next day at a meeting of the Local 6 Election Committee.

Following his re-election, Ward thanked members for their show of support. He said the Union works well because of its dedicated officers, staff and delegates. He thanked Local 6 President Jim Donovan for his creative and tireless efforts on behalf of the membership, saying, "No one works harder than Jim."

Ward also saluted Secretary-Treasurer Vanessa Meade and Executive Vice President Rich Maroko, saying they worked long and difficult hours. Ward said, "I couldn't imagine what the Union would be like without Vanessa Meade," and he said Maroko "has a tremendous footprint in everything that goes on at Local 6." He thanked the Local 6 Vice Presidents, attorneys and staff members, too, as well as the members of the Executive Board and the Delegate Assembly.

Ward said that when discussions on a new contract began earlier this year he was very concerned about the state of things on a national and local level.

"I was worried about the attacks on public employees and their wage and benefit packages, I was deeply concerned about an unjustified anti-union sentiment that seemed to be growing in the country, and I was also concerned about how President Obama's health care reform law would affect us," he said. "For those reasons, I felt that we needed a long term contract that would put us in the most secure position. I also felt it would give us time to figure out how we spend the next six or seven years organizing new members."

Ward emphasized that changes obtained through negotiations in 1999, 2006 and this year have made the industry-wide agreement a totally renovated document.

"If you compare the contract before our 1999 negotiations with our new contract they really are two different documents," he said. "I know of no union anywhere that has the ability we have to enforce the contract, grieve problems, monitor health and safety and protect employees in the event of the sale or transfer of a property."

While noting the great strength of the contract, Ward nevertheless said that in the face of the growing number of non-union hotels and the rising anti-union sentiment fostered by right wing millionaires it was clearly necessary to make our Union even more powerful.

"Our challenge over the next seven years isn't only to maintain what we have it is to build on what we have," he said. "We need to organize new members to maintain density in the hotel industry. We have to continue to press our political program so that we can change zoning laws and have elected officials that support unions. We will need to get everyone involved to accomplish these things, and I know we can do this."

Ward concluded his remarks by thanking the membership for their support and pledging to continue the policies that led to the re-election of his administration.

Because the number of Executive Board Members and the number of Delegate Assembly Members are determined by a count of Local 6's membership, there are increases in the number of members serving on both bodies. There are now 22 Executive Board Members and 109 Delegate Assembly Members. They join reelected officers in the Union's administration such as Business Manager Ward, President Donovan, Secretary-Treasurer Meade, Executive Vice President Maroko and Vice Presidents Edward Cedeno, Hazel Hazzard, George Padilla and Rolando Ruiz. The names of the members of the entire Local 6 administration elected this week are published on page 3 of this edition of Hotel Voice.