Female workers laid off earlier this year at Richmond’s Pacific Gateway Hotel protested Thursday outside the federal government’s offices in Downtown Vancouver.
The women were once more calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step in and restore their jobs, after the hotel was seconded by the government last year as a quarantine premises for travellers entering Canada via YVR.
It’s understood that the majority of the people currently working at the hotel are employees of the Red Cross, which is carrying out the quarantine duties for the government.
The displaced hotel workers – who are still officially on strike - claim the government’s use of the hotel basically put them out of a job.
And they say they were disproportionately affected by the move as most of them are female and “racialized.”
The hotel, according to union UNITE Here Local 40, has terminated 74 per cent of its female employees since February.
