 I'm Kristen Joy, and this is Your Rights at Work. And our guest today is Sonia Guevara, and she is a hotel housekeeper and a member organizer of the labor union Unite Here Local 8. Welcome, Sonia. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Well, thank you for meeting with me to talk about workers' rights in Washington state. Can you first tell me a little bit about your union and what you do in your job as a member organizer? Yeah. Our union is Unite Here Local 8. We represent more than 1,000 of workers in hotels and cafeterias from Portland to Seattle and Spokane. We organize the workers so they can have the right on their jobs and they can get a better pay and help insurance. So our topic today is labor unions and a worker's right to participate in or organize a union at work. So what is a labor union? We are organizations for the workers and by the workers. We fight for the rights, for respect. We fight to get better contracts. So, Sonia, before starting to work at the Hilton Hotel, you worked in a different hotel where workers didn't have a union. Can you compare them? How was working in a hotel with no union similar to or different from working in a hotel with a union? Yes. I can tell you one of the big experience that I have in the past. I was a single mom and for me to be in a non-union hotel was pretty hard because if I want to get a day off or go on vacation, or I have to choose if I want to work and get money or I want to go on vacation without pay. And so for me it was very hard because I have to choose, okay, I will go on vacation, enjoy my life, but I will struggle for the next month because I will not have enough money to pay my rent. So back in 2015, I enjoy at the Hilton in downtown Seattle and I didn't know what union means. I was like, they say welcome to union and I like, I didn't have idea. So when they told me that I'm going to have my vacations, I'm going to have a pique or I'm going to have pay meal or pay break, pay back lunch. I was like, what is that? Because in the past I didn't have that. So if I wanna get my lunch break, I have to clock out and I will not get pay, but when I started at Hilton I was getting paid to get my lunch. I was getting free lunch. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is something that not a lot of people have it. And yeah, that's one of the reasons I work at Hilton, a union work because for me, vacations is big. Now I can say, okay, I can take my daughter to vacation and I will get pay. And I have my health insurance that never had before. You know, I have seen so much difference. Now I can say, I have some savings and in the past I didn't have any savings. Yeah, plus another thing that I always say it's that a non-union hotel, they can make you work or clean so many rooms. But now with a union hotel, I only have to clean 15 rooms maximum. Oh, is that part of your contract? Did you negotiate that in the union contract? Yes. So you mentioned a contract. Many people work in workplaces where they don't have a union. What is a union contract? That union workers, we have the legal rights to negotiate a contract. And we also have the right to deny whatever the company wanna give us. We decide what we wanna have in our contract. Okay, give me one second. So in our union contract, we have classification and wages, hours of work and overtime. We get seniority. We also got work rules, free meals and rest periods, health and welfare. We have vacation, holidays, personal days and sick days, uniform and lackers. We also have a right of status and immigration status. Ooh, tell me more about that. Yeah, so this time we agree, well, we asked the company to agree to us that if immigration come to any hotels and they're asked for somebody, we have the right that they can just call the person and do not let the immigration people come inside the hotel. Sonia, is there anything else you would like to share with us about labor unions and workers rights? I wanna say for those immigrant people like me, if you say we cannot do that, we cannot do it in this country, I will say yes, we can do it. Thank you so much. Sonia Guevara, union member and member organizer at Unite Here Local 8. I have been inspired by your story and learned a lot. And I hope that you watch the next episode of Your Rights at Work. Thank you for having me.