Living wage and union rights at Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza hotels now

I have worked in an Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) branded hotel for 14 years. I’m also a member of Unite the union’s hospitality workers branch.

My colleagues and I are overworked and poorly paid. Some of us are bullied and verbally abused on a daily basis by managers working to impossible targets.

I’m proud of my union membership. But it’s not something I can openly talk about at work – it’s pretty much a no go area at IHG.

So is decent pay, working in a hotel means that we are among some of the lowest paid workers in the UK. Shockingly around 80 per cent of us are paid less than the real living wage, which is £9 an hour/ or £10.55 an hour in London.

IHG made $27.4bn last year. It can afford to pay us a wage we can live on.

It should also respect my union. In 2009, my employer signed up to the United Nations Global Compact, committing to uphold 10 principles on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption.

I actually thought that things would be different because my employer is a signatory to this international UN agreement, but it’s not.

After nearly a decade of my union trying to negotiate access to IHG’s London hotels, including Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, we’ve had enough.

Unite has now sent a formal complaint to the UN Global Compact.

Please support me and my colleagues by signing and sharing this petition.

Join us in calling on Keith Barr to work with our union, Unite. It’s only by working together with our union that we can root out low pay, insecure work, bullying and exploitation from IHG hotels in the UK.

Tell him also that the UN Global Compact has got to be genuine. Promoting and protecting human rights at work needs to be more than a box ticking exercise.

Thank you,
John (name changed to protect identity)