 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. This is, my guest this morning is a dear friend, but all of you know I only talk to dear friends. And this is one of those that I have known since he was a little boy. And now I am so proud of Eric Gill. I'm absolutely delighted with you and all of the people that were on strike for 50 some days. And now that I'm here we are to welcome Eric. It's delight. I am so excited about seeing you this morning. How are you doing? Great. I mean this is what I live for. Seeing working people having the unity and the bond between them, the solidarity. Seeing working people have power. That's what I live for. And so every smile, every hug, it's, I mean it's what I live for. So this is one of the few times I really, really love my job. Oh come on, you give it your all. Now for those of you I said I've known him since he was a little boy. And that's because I knew his mother and father who were the bedrock of the Democratic Party. And his father was a congressman and had, I'm trying to do this. And when they were in D.C. was, how old were you when you were in D.C.? That's when I met you when you were in D.C. Seven or eight. Seven or eight, yep. See he's grown quite a bit since then. His father was responsible. He was the floor manager for LBJ, for President LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson, for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And that's a very special thing, a special time in my life anyway. And so we have just been friends ever since. So Eric, tell us about you and Local Five. First of all, how did you get to be Local Five? When it started out it was just hotel and... No, we've been Local Five for years. Well, pretty much since they charted the local in 1938, we've been Local Five. It's the name and the branding of our international union affiliation has changed over the years. We were once hotel and restaurant employees of our tender. Yes. But most many of our unions, like ours, have been resulted from different craft... We used to have a waiters and waitresses union a hundred years ago. And there was a bartenders union. It was like on a craft basis. And when Local Five was formed, and quite properly, those craft locals were formed into what's called an industrial union, which is a union that has multiple crafts, but people all working for the same company. Obviously that gives strength and power having all the workers basically under one roof in one union able to work together. And so our union was founded in 1938. And I got to save much of our current strength. And I give complete credit to my predecessor. Our village put together a very strong industrial union and he added pieces in that most of our unions, local unions across the country that are affiliated with our union right here. For example, don't have front desk or accounting. Many of them don't have engineering, you know, the maintenance departments. Some of those are in other unions and some of those are in just non-union in other towns. We have all of those. And that wasn't an accident. Art ran a program to make that so. In fact, our clerical workers, our front desk and accounting and, you know, PBX and so on, they organized in 1960. The company didn't want to recognize them to join the union. And they all walked off the job and went down to the labor board. You know, they did a job action and got in the union. So our union has always had, you know, first of all, structured correctly in terms of being able to exert the most unity, the most power, you know, in our environment, but also a fighting tradition, you know, that even today, you know, I mean, obviously, most of the people who had the fights in the 50s and 60s are not with us anymore. But nonetheless, you know, the tradition has carried on. I'm proud of our generation here having, you know, put a nice touch on that. Because I think now, somewhere way back here, once the agriculture people, that is sugar, pineapple, those dock workers were able to break the Big Five, then along comes tourism, which was they could get away with not paying much for the workers in the tourist business. Yeah, well, the Big Five is us. I mean, what is now owned and operated, the hotels we struck were owned by Madsen. So definitely, you know, the subsidiary of the Big Five, so to speak. So they're still there? Well, the Osano family bought them from Madsen back in the 60s. And so we've been, you know, with under Japanese ownership since, you know, since I was in grade school. But, you know, and we've had ups and downs over the course of, you know, what, 60 years or whatever. You know, so there's nothing particularly new about what happened. It's new for the people who are new to it. But, you know, what we saw was a readjustment in a power balance between the management and the workers. And, you know, we're married to the company. I mean, the truth is we're married to them. We have a contract. We're married to them. And then, like any relationship, you get into occasional, you know, spats and stuff. The key to preserving a relationship, though, is not whether you get into a fight, but how do you conduct it and how do you end it? And so right now, that's, you know, we're very much focused on getting back to work. And, you know, really, we have a mutual interest. We want the business to come back. That's our work. And we want the business to succeed because otherwise we can't get raises. And so, you know, we went through a period of time where the differences between us became the main thing. But we're going back to work and what unites us with management is increasing in there because we all have to operate the hotel together in order to make money. They certainly found that out without us. They were doing too well. Yeah. And, you know, and obviously we need them so that we can have somebody sign in our paychecks. You know, so this is part of a whole, you know, I call it kind of a dance, but it's really more of a, you know, it's more like plates on our earth. You know, we rub against each other. There's earthquakes, you know, but generally there we are. And we're all on the same earth together. And we all work in the same community. And so, you know, I think my members have been, I mean, they're just overjoyed that they know now that they have the power to do this. And so for my members, you know, it's not just relief. There's plenty of relief. Finally, we get to go back where there's plenty of joy. They go back to work tomorrow, is that it? Yeah, most of them. Thursday, yeah. Yeah, there's going to be obviously a process. But really what they got was a taste of power, a taste of solidarity, a taste of what's potentially there for workers in our society. You know, we don't have to be downtrodden. We don't have to be, you know, feel like small potatoes and helpless and all those things that working people say, you know. It's people's biggest excuse for not voting or getting involved. I'm sorry, guys. Small potatoes are not going to matter. The truth is, we more than just matter, working people organized together are a necessity in our society if we're going to have a democracy. If there's going to be any power balance between the wealthy who've got it all their way right now, getting all the tax breaks, getting all the permits, everything they want, the government just gives them our tax money. The only effective counterbalance to that is working people. And we're only effective in that if we have power. And that means we have to build our unity. And really that's what we've done over the last weeks. You have people at the hospitals also. Were they on strike? No. Look, we did not attempt to strike everybody we represent. We were very conscious of our power and the limits of our power. The hospitals weren't. Not all the hotels either. As a union, we recognized, and this was several years ago, we recognized that we have a new heat on the block. With Marriott eating up Starwood and becoming twice the size of Hilton, four times the size of Hyatt, and rapidly growing. It's kind of like the Frankenstein monster getting loose. And so we recognized that we had to have a rearrangement of the power balance with the hotels, but if you're going to do that, you've got to take on the biggest one if you're going to have an impact on all. So we knew we had to have a reckoning with Marriott. Kyoya runs the Marriott flag, and they're in this mix. But Kyoya is a different owner, and they have an independent view from Marriott as well. Sometimes those two entities don't get along very well. So we ended up striking five hotels out of several dozen. We didn't attempt to strike Hilton and Hyatt, and what we're doing is called pattern bargaining. We take the biggest one and we get the deal, and we go to the next biggest one, and it's like, here's the deal, right? This is it, yeah. This is it, right? And we'll see how Hilton responds to that. This is a rich contract. I'm not sure what they're going to do. Well, we need to take a break, and we'll be back in 60 seconds. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Hello, my name is Stephanie Mock, and I'm one of three hosts of Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Food and Farmer series. Our other hosts are Matt Johnson and Pomei Weigert, and we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system. We talk to farmers, chefs, restaurateurs, and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in Hawaii. We are on a Thursdays at 4 p.m., and we hope we'll see you next time. Hello, Huff. I'm Marcia, and we are back with my dear friend, Eric Gill, from Local 5. And they just completed, what a journey. My God, what, 51 days? 51 days. And yes, yes, this is mine. And I wore it, and I walked the picket line, and I carried the picket line. And people would ask me, are you really working at a hotel? Aren't you kind of old to be working at a hotel? Well, not really, Marcia. But I was out there, I was out there, yeah. You've got many memories of our old ageing owner. I was walking the picket line. It was one thing that really interests me, and that is the hotels talking about robots. And the thought of the front desk with a robot, how do you check in? And people come to Hawaii because they want the Hawaiian experience. How do you get a Hawaiian experience with a robot? Well, apparently they teach the robot to say, my hello. Oh, my God. And that kind of thing. Well, look, you know, I mean, to be clear, our society is driving the production of robots. And the government's doing that because they want terminated too. They want warbots. They want drone attack craft and all that stuff. And it's happening very fast because the government is putting these huge tax credits to basically fund this research. So our government, both state and federal, is giving huge monies to these robots. And it's not just robots. Robots is kind of like the easier thing to see. We're talking about smart algorithms that can coordinate activity across department lines. We're talking about pads on the tables where instead of a weight help, you just hit the buttons on the pad and somebody comes in and brings you a bag of food. That's already out there in many airports where some airports you don't see any human being actually serving food taking orders. It's all done electronically now. So they would replace that in the hotel? Well, they're already working on it. The Marriott has already run out its app. It's a similar app to the one I used to get on the plane from the airline. You know, it puts a little URL code and you can use your phone. And hold it up to the little pad in the door and it'll open the door for you. So it's possible, and they're advertising this, that you can go from the plane to the room and not have to stop to talk to them. So how do they replace real people, your people in the service industry? Well, that's what they're doing. You know, we would anticipate, I mean, if you look at where they're going with this, the hoteliers are basically the owners and these operators are basically dominated by big private equity, these big huge corporations that are doing this at the airlines too. So when was the last time you went and checked in with a real human being to get on a plane flight? I mean, there's just too few of them. They're only handling the baggage tagging. Everybody else goes to the kiosk, right? How do you do that with the room service? Well, they're eliminating room service. What do you mean they eliminate room service? So I mean, I can't call and have breakfast brought up to the room? In many hotels, no. However, however, now they're backfilling that. So I got a picture on my phone of this robot standing in this little niche in a hotel in Los Angeles and it basically has a, you know, I mean, that robot can open up its head compartment, you put your order in there, your hamburger, and it'll come buzz its way up and it's going to knock on your door or hit the button on your door and you get there and you open it up and there's your food. And what about the beds, making beds and especially here, those 800 pound mattresses, how do you... Yeah, some of that stuff they haven't gotten to yet and it may be too expensive to deploy but they've already running out these robots. They're calling Rosie that'll buzz around and do the vacuuming. You see them on TV, right, but these are the real smart ones that an algorithm that can get behind the toilet and make sure it does everything and then just bounce off the wall, you know. And so they're already touting these at trade shows saying, you know, with this kind of technology, one housekeeper can do the work with three. So what do we do with the other two? You know, and what does Hawaii do without the paychecks of those other two? Right. And what about the tax, you know, robots don't pay tax. No. You know, so we have a real problem here that's bigger than just our industry. It's a problem in society where work that people need is going to be increasingly unavailable and be done by machines and yet society hasn't done anything to address the impact on people. And so, you know, it's, you know, in a way we feel like we're not just fighting for our contract. We're kind of like, let's shoot up the flares here community. Let's look at this, you know, if we lose, you know, half of our front desk jobs and if we lose, you know, two thirds of our housekeeping jobs, it's a huge blow to our tax base as well as to obviously to each of those individual families. So, you know, we're not, you know, we've always seen this strike as we're not just fighting for us. When we say one job should be enough, we think that's true for everyone. Not everybody has a union that can fight for it. Right. But we can show people that you can fight for it. And the same thing on the tech, you know. Well, now, I'm still puzzled as to how they think that because people come to Hawaii for the experience and the first thing they say, oh, where are the Hawaiians? And robots aren't Hawaiian. They look for this experience. And how do you, you can tell I'm flabbergasted. I think the big, you know, we've had these conversations in my position. I end up having conversations with billionaires and people that, you know, that we'd have to deal with. You know, I'm not going to, you know, my impression is that the industry feels, or at least some elements in the industry feel, that people will accept these lower service standards the same way we've accepted a much more terrible experience in our airplane flights. Right. You know, you don't get a pillow anymore, right? You don't get, you don't get a meal anymore. You get crammed in to make the seats smaller and smaller. You got to check in in the kiosk if the machine doesn't check in. You can't find anybody. But we're still flying. And so I think that's where, you know, when we talk about the people that own and operate our industry, and I got to make an exception for the Osano family. You know, I mean, the truth is we struck the people who actually are more committed to service, which is in a way one good reason to do that because they're willing to give us some guarantees on service standards. Some of these other hotels, there's no guarantee at all. They are testing what the traveling public, how much reduction the traveling public is willing to accept. In Hawaii, the room per room has the highest room rate in the country. And we have a 365 day season, which New York and LA don't have. Paris doesn't have, you know. So they're making money all year round, highest in the nation. So what's the issue with why do they need robots to cut back on? Well, you know, these are the people that are making the decisions here. Don't live here. They don't travel. They're not in a hotel business. They own hotels. They buy them and sell them. They're real estate people. And so for them, you know, it's a question of how much yield and how much profit do you make per square foot? So that's the pressure on our restaurants, many of whom are given at best and most of whom lose some money. The people that run the hotel that want to sell hotel rooms and host guests, they want to keep the restaurant. Right. Because that helps you sell hotel rooms and take care of guests. And that leaves because, you know, some of the losses in the restaurant is because somebody gripes about having a hair on the mattress or something and they give them a free meal. You know, so they use the restaurants as their kind of complaint department and obviously that earns us because then they say the restaurants lose your money and blah, blah, blah. But the fact is these guys are real estate people. They look at that restaurant space just using that as an example. Here's a square foot that I could be losing 10 cents a, you know, 10 cents a month on that square foot. Or I could be making, you know, $2 a square foot on that by renting it to a t-shirt shop or something. So there's a basic disconnect between the people that own and to substantially have control over what happens in the hotel and the people that run hotels and like us work for hotels. Because we actually want to serve the guests. We want to make them happy so they come back. These guys just want to do some refurbishing so they can flip the place and make $100 million on the sale. And so, you know, so we have an industry here in Hawaii where, you know, this is our bread and butter. This is what we have. You know, what we have is our beaches and they're scooping gold off them and putting them in their pocket and taking it some other place and building something else or buying something else. And what stays here in Hawaii is what stays in our members' pocket. And management pocket to be fair. They live here too. They spend their paychecks here too. But the people that work in the hotel are not the people making the decisions on this. And it's not even the people that run the hotel, you know, and substantially, you know, they have to dance to the tune of the owner. And not on everything. There's a lot of fighting going on between them. But my point is that we have a new situation where the people that own our means of production, our livelihood, our bread and butter, they don't care about hotels. They don't care about the tourists. They don't care about us. They don't care about Hawaii. They don't care what the governor says or the mayor or anybody else. They just don't care. You know, that's the problem. We're dealing with people that really don't care about us, which is why at the end, after we get done trying to persuade people, we have to put some push. Yeah. Well, I'm very proud of you. And the workers. And like I told everybody that I was out there, naturally, where else would I be? You know, what else would I do but walk with the picket line? You got a lot of friends there so you can talk to people. Yes. Maisie walked the picket line. The council candidate Tommy Waters was out. The mayor was out walking the picket line. There were lots and lots of community people out there. Tulsi was out. Yeah. Joey and Ron off the council were out. You know, I mean, we've got friends, you know, and that's very important when you're on strike. You find out who your friends are and who's against you. That's what a strike does. It sorts people out. When Thanksgiving morning, we stood in line. At the Lee's Bakery to buy the custard pies for the workers. And, you know, a two and a half hour line. And people were saying, because I had on the red shirt and everything. And people were saying, oh, we'll get one for you. We'll get one for you. And it was amazing that people, when they knew what we were doing, added pies to the ones we were already buying. The community support was wonderful. Yeah. And it takes a while for that to, you know, I mean, you know, next time we'll be quicker at this. You know, we've learned a lot of questions because, look, the community support was always there. We could see it. People honking, you know, high-fiving us. You know, people come off the street. You know, one tourist couple came off the street and just give $1,000 right there. And, you know, in the last week or so, since we've been able to put a team actually out there on the phones, you know, our donations to the Strike Fund have just skyrocketed. You know, just, you know, quadrupled in pace. You know, just by actually having people assigned to go call our friends and ask them for help. And so, you know, so the community support has always been buoying us up. And frankly, we deserve it. We're fighting for the community here. You know, these are some of the best jobs in Hawaii. You know, some of these, you know, get some nasty people on the street sometimes, like, hey, thank you. Where's Martin? This or that. It's like, would I think it would be worth more than anybody? We want you to get a raise, too. You know, what, you know, we had these guys like, you know, what do you think you're worth more than me? I got to say, well, maybe you should get a union, bro. Yes. You know, because the fact is we're, we know what we're worth. And we know how much they're making on our worth. And that's your discussion with your boss. We will help you. You know, so we really aren't fighting for everybody. We want this one job should be enough. We want it for everybody, not just us. We want our nest nephews and nieces and all. Well, surprisingly, I saw a protest on the mainland and somebody had a sign that said one job should be enough. This was in a totally different area. It wasn't a strike, but here was this great big sign that says one job. That's what we're hoping for, Marcia. We recognize that, you know, we're a union. You know, we're not a political party. We're a union. You know, our job is to deliver, you know, the basic necessity of life and empower our members, right? But for us to be successful in that, we have to have a lot more than just what we can do. We can't save Medicare or Social Security on the picket line. We have to have political juice to do that. Working people need that. And so we're hoping that this one job should be enough. We're consciously trying to spark a movement about that because this is the historic movement of American working people. The eight-hour day. It's what formed up our modern union movement was the fight for the eight-hour day. We let it slip. Our generation got to try to get it back. Well, and most people don't know. They think that the weekend was in the Constitution when, in fact, it was the unions that gave us a 40-hour week. That's the fight for the eight-hour day, right? And it's a fight for basic human rights, too, because what the slogan then and now again, eight hours for work, right? Eight hours to sleep. Eight hours to do what you will. The reason working people don't get involved in politics is they're too busy. Yes. And you can't go to the hearing at 10 o'clock in the morning because you're working on your job. And so eight hours a day to do what you will is not just taking care of our families. Yes, that's what we work for. But it also gives us time to go to the PTA meeting to go out to do some political work, to support a candidate, to get involved in the neighborhood board or whatever. Working people shouldn't be excluded from government quite the opposite. Our democracy depends on working people being involved. Otherwise, it's all the rich people getting away all the time. And we can see where that leads. It's leading us right down. You can see it happening in our country right now. We have a president who's a Nazi who's basically promoting the Klan, going with this woman who wants to lynch people. I mean, we're challenged in our democracy right now, the hope of our society is that working people can get organized enough to counterbalance that corporate power and have a free and fair democracy that it's fair to everyone. One of our pastors who'd been out, but he gave a sermon that I really thought when we opened our strike headquarters, it just struck me and said, justice, the concept of justice is the concept of love in a social situation. Justice is how we love each other in a community by being fair to everyone. And that's so opposite to where the corporate billionaires and their congressional stooges and all those clowns in Congress, they're going the other way. And they're not going to stop. The only thing that's going to stop them is when they bounce off of us working people. We have to be powerful enough to bounce on them. And it's no accident, I think, that so many people in formerly blue states voted for Trump. I don't blame them. They lost their jobs when the Clintons took their industry and gave it off to Mexico and stuff and after. People have been waiting 20 years to vote against the Clinton. That gutted their town and it took the jobs out. The kids had to move out. The community was basically destroyed. The Democrats did that. So they're open then to a Trump because they don't have a union anymore. Their factory went. They don't have a union that can remind them of our class interests as workers. And so they're susceptible to racism and prejudice and all that stuff. And they just want somebody who's going to shake up the tree and here we have what we got. Well, Eric. Thank you so much for all these years of all the work you've done. And I know your mother and father are looking down and they're very proud. I'm certain of that. It's just wonderful. Thank you for being with us today. And you will come back. Well, I have to, Marcia. I'm one of your friends. And I'm proud to be one of your friends, Marcia. I mean, there's nobody who's done more than you to keep people reminded of some of the basic justice questions. And like I said, if we don't have justice then the love in our community is gone. And so let's continue to fight for that. Thank you so much. And we'll see you next time. Aloha.