By Eric Berman
6/22/2009
Ten Indianapolis hotel workers have rallied at the statehouse to push for a wage-disclosure provision in the Capital Improvement Board bailout.
House Democrats inserted a provision in the bill requiring five downtown hotels to make public what they pay their workers.
The CIB is seeking tax hikes to support the operation of the Convention Center. Supporters argue that creates a duty for hotels with skywalk connections to the center -- the Westin, Hyatt, Embassy Suites, Marriott, and a new Marriott Center under construction -- to show the public the nature of the jobs they've been touting.
The debate is a new battlefield in a longer-running fight, with the Service Employees International Union and the hotel workers' union UNITE HERE trying to win the right to unionize Indianapolis hotel workers. UNITE HERE organized Monday's protest.
UNITE HERE argues the provision would shine a light on a system in which some Indianapolis hotel jobs pay five or 10 dollars an hour less than the same job at a unionized hotel in the same chain.
The amendment was added to the CIB bill in the House Ways and Means Committee -- and helped torpedo the bill, when Republicans voted against it, leaving too little support to pass the bill.
While some legislators have blasted the Ballard Administration's handling of the CIB debate, GOP leaders say the party would have supported the bill if Democrats had removed the labor clause and a proposed surtax on concession-stand sales. The Senate version, embedded in the Senate's budget bill, makes those changes.
|