5 global messages from Ron Oswald

On Nordic Forum, the general secretary of IUF, Ron Oswald, focused on recent victories, decent working conditions, the threat from Airbnb and the globalization of capital.

On last week’s Nordic Forum in Malmö, Ron Oswald held a speech for the delegates. He is the general secretary of IUF, The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations.
Right here, you get an overview of his five most important messages on the global situation for workers within the hotel, restaurant, catering and tourism industries:


1) We need a hotel, restaurant, catering and tourism sector with dignity and decent wages!
“ … Some of the struggles I have mentioned very much point to how the sector is changing and to what is wrong with this sector and why we need to fight so hard to make the sector a decent place to work which it clearly is not today. A sector where workers are actually valued, where their rights are respected, where they can work with some dignity as well as decent wages in a job they can imagine being able to raise a family on – and only one job instead of the two or three so many workers in the sector and in our other service sectors need to hold to survive.”


2) We should compare room rates with wages in the hotel sector – decent work isn’t ruining companies!
“I have always thought it would be good to research room rates against wages within these major brands. And it is not only comparisons with a country like Ethiopia that should shame these brands. Compare London and New York for example. In one an insecure, non-union and largely immigrant workforce earns around USD 8.00 an hour in five star hotels. In New York a secure, unionized but also often immigrant workforce earns USD 28.00 an hour – almost four times as much – and also works with dignity and pride in their jobs – and they stay in the job! Room rates? Not that different! The difference? New York is close to 60% unionized and more so in the higher end hotels. London in entirely non-union.”


3) The new digital economy like Airbnb is sucking the air out the industry and driving up rents in major cities!
“… A new threat to our members, particularly our well organized members, has emerged in recent times. The emergence of an unregulated, growing and totally exploitative system of hostility obscenely called the “sharing economy” through particularly Airbnb is posing threats to our members as well as the industry. We need to be far more vocal and active in calling it what it is and in challenging its right to grow unregulated. It is sucking the air out of the industry and also incidentally in many major cities driving up rents to the point where those cities are emptied of residents as the plague of Airbnb takes up more and more of the real estate.”


4) We have had important victories at hotels around the world during the last few years!
“In Accor we have seen membership grow amongst other places in Morocco, in Indonesia, in Canada and in Benin in large part as a result of tough and determined fights by members supported by our ability to open up some space in Accor assisting them to win. It looks very much like an ongoing organizing effort at the Sofitel in Los Angeles is about to be won again involving some opening of space through our negotiations with corporate Accor management. And in the Philippines as part of our Global Housekeeping Campaign in Accor the outsourcing of room cleaning has been to a degree turned back and reversed with the winning of permanent jobs for previously outsourced housekeepers. (…)
In the more modest but high end Belmond Hotel chain we engaged with international corporate management and reversed strong union-busting activity in Myanmar at the Governor Residence Hotel which led to the first independent hotel union in that emerging democracy and has been followed by other wins in the now booming tourism industry there.”


5) Capital has gone global – unions must do the same!
“Capital has gone global. That is self-evident and staring – or more often slapping – us in the face. We need to do the same but we will not do so by keeping on doing the same things in the same way with the same resources as in the past.”