[antiwar-van] EMILY TANG FIRED! VANCOUVER PICKET SUNDAY FOR WORKERS RIGHTS

Fri Jan 28 01:31:10 PST 2005

EMILY TANG FIRED BY THE METROPOLITAN HOTEL!!

Solidarity picket at the Metropolitan Hotel in Vancouver:

Sunday January 30th

12noon

Meet at the Georgia St. Side of the Vancouver Art Gallery

Following an urgent appeal from the Metropolitan Hotels Workers Committee (MHWC) for solidarity across Canada and internationally, Fire This Time and Youth Third World Alliance invite you to join a solidarity picket of the Metropolitan Hotel in Vancouver against the firing of Emily Tang from the Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto. This action will be timed alongside a picket in Toronto and with other actions throughout the US and beyond. Solidarity greetings will be exchanged with picketers in Toronto. 

The MHWC formed amongst the workers at the Metropolitan Hotel in Toronto in January 2004 in response to the discrimination, abuse and unsafe conditions that the mostly immigrant workers at the hotel suffered. After consistent weekly pickets were organized outside the hotel, the management targeted Emily Tang as a central organizer of the committee. 

At the beginning of September Emily spoke out against racist discrimination and abuse at the hotel at a public film showing in Toronto and the hotel management issued an order stating that if she continued to speak out against the hotel then she would be fired. One month later she was suspended. Actions in response to this suspension were organized in Toronto and at the Metropolitan Hotel in Vancouver. This unjust suspension, aimed at silencing Emily and all workers organizing for their rights at the Metropolitan, did not end until January 24th - more than 3 months later.

When Emily reported to work for her first day back, she was promptly fired. After all other attempts to silence Emily had failed, the owner and management of the hotel executed this final step. Emily stands as a proud symbol of resistance against attacks by bosses against the hard-won rights of workers. As an immigrant woman of colour, her courageous fight carries even more significance and importance.

At this time of crisis and attack on the democratic and labour rights of Emily Tang - and through her, on all oppressed workers - it is critical that all working, poor and oppressed people stand together and demand:

RE-HIRE EMILY TANG!

LIFT THE GAG ORDER ON WORKERS AT THE METROPOLITAN HOTEL!

END THE RACIST AND DISCRIMINATORY ATTACKS ON WORKERS BY THE METROPOLITAN HOTEL!

DEFEND THE FREE SPEECH, DEMOCRATIC AND LABOUR RIGHTS OF ALL WORKERS! 

For more information on Emily Tang and the MHWC, please see:

www.metropolitanhotelsworkers.org 

Also see the interview with Emily Tang and the article on the MHWC in issue #20-21 of the Fire This Time Newspaper, available online at:

www.fire-this-time.org 

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BACKGROUNDER: Appeal for support from the MHWC

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An Urgent Appeal for Solidarity in Toronto and Internationally

Fight Back Begins with Picket at the Metropolitan this Sunday, January 30th at 3.00 PM 108 Chestnut Street, West of Bay South off Dundas

Today, Metropolitan Hotel Workers Committee member, Emily Tang, was fired by the Metropolitan Hotel. She had been suspended for weeks for violating ashameless policy that bans workers from making public statements about the Hotel deemed negative by management.

Emily has been targeted in this way by the Metropolitan’s owner, Henry Wu because she has been ready to take a stand for justice in her workplace and because all attempts to intimidate and silence her have failed. She is herself

one of the many workers at the Hotel who have been injured by the workplace conditions imposed upon them and her anger at what she and her fellow workers faced turned her into someone who refused to be bullied. A great deal 

of information about the injustices Emily has played a role in fighting can be found on the MHWC website at www.metropolitanhotelsworkers.org

This attack on Emily is an attempt to silence the committee she is part of and it will fail miserably. It is also a vicious attack on the right of workers to free speech and their ability to challenge employers who abuse and

exploit them. While her termination letter repeats the assertion that Emily has made ‘untrue statements’ no one in Hotel Management, from Wu down, have ever responded to repeated challenges to show that anything said by the 

MHWC, its members or supporters, has been false. Emily has actually been fired for speaking the truth because Wu would rather it stay hidden.

The MHWC will expect the union that represents Metropolitan workers, UNITE HERE Local 75, to take every action to defend their fired member. Given,however, that the union’s lawyer recently attempted to convince Emily that the Hotel’s gag order policy was reasonable and that she should obey it, it will be necessary to pressure the union leadership on this issue and for the MHWC and its supporters to act independently in Emily’s defence.

It should finally be said that the work of the rank and file MHWC has been a vital development in this City in terms of immigrant workers fighting back against employers who feel they are above challenge. This is a serious attack but it can and must be turned back. Emily is ready to go on speaking out and fighting back and she needs and deserves your support.

The MHWC will not have the opportunity to formally meet for several days but, based on discussions that have taken place to-day among workers and supporters, it is possible for the following initial outline of a solidarity campaign to be put forward.

1. All supporters please come out to the above mentioned picket at the Metropolitan this Sunday. Bring flags and banners and messages of support from your organizations.

2. Call the Metropolitan Hotel’s General Manager, Jeremy Roncoroni, at (416)977-5000 and let him know this firing must be lifted.

3. Contact Local 75 President, Paul Clifford or Alexandra Dagg of UNITE HERE National leadership and urge them to take up this fight in a serious way. They are at (416) 510-0887 or into at unitehere.ca

4. If you are based at York University, add your voice to the call for Henry Wu to be kicked off the Board of the York Foundation. His conduct as an employer renders him unfit to play a role in a body linked to a public institution.

5. Henry Wu owns three hotels in Canada. They are the only hotels in this Country that are listed as part of a corporate network of hotels and hotel chains who band together for mutual promotion purposes under the name of Preferred Hotels. They are active in a range of cities and countries. Their website is at www.preferredhotels.com We are asking people everywhere to contact or hold actions at hotels linked to this group to demand that Henry Wu to be removed from the Preferred Hotels Board and that his hotels to be taken off their international listings.

Thank you for your support and solidarity.

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