Emily Tang Fired by the Metropolitan Hotel

EMILY TANG FIRED BY THE METROPOLITAN HOTEL!!

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

To-day, Metropolitan Hotel Workers Committee member, Emily Tang, was fired by the Metropolitan Hotel. She had been suspended for weeks for violating a shameless 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 http://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 info [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 http://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.

METROPOLITANHOTELSWORKERS.ORG