A contemporary labour geography of hotel workers in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

This thesis examines the contemporary struggle that Toronto's hotel workers are waging to shape their economic, social and cultural geographies. The conflicts with management, government and even other workers extend beyond the workplace into the streets and social spaces that hotel workers are creating for themselves. The contest is an economic and cultural struggle that disrupts established decision-making practices and social networks, promotes the diversity of the hotel workforce integrating a politics of recognition with a politics of distribution, and positions workers at the centre of urban 'spaces of consumption'. The weapons used range from political and economic tactics to the very redefinition of what it means to be a hotel worker in Toronto.; The research is largely based on a detailed case study of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 75 in Toronto. HERE Local 75, plagued by incompetence and corruption in the early 1990s, has undergone as significant renewal since an imposed trusteeship by the international union in 1994. The qualitative research is based on participant interviews with union staff, rank and file workers, hotel managers and tourism planning officials as well as experiences drawn from a period of contract employment with HERE in the late 1990s.; The story begins with an overview of the changing competitive environment in the city's hotel sector from a labour perspective. The discussion of the challenges facing hotel workers is followed by an extensive description of the demographically diverse hotel workforce and unions in the sector. The diversity of the hotel labour force (made up of largely immigrants, women and workers of colour) and the different unions competing to represent hotel workers have fragmented the sector posing several challenges for organizing and bargaining.; Strategies used by hotel workers in their fight for recognition from employers and the broader public also involve entering the policy arena and establishing a voice for hotel workers in processes of tourism development and urban planning. Hotel workers are dependent on tourism for their incomes but are also residents of Toronto and have a unique vision for building a sustainable cultural tourism base and 'liveable city'. Unions are attempting to instill in their members and the public a greater awareness of the role vibrant communities play in successful urban tourism. Furthermore, some unions are attempting to transform the hotel worker from a service provider to a cultural worker and highlight the central position of hotel workers in ethnicized and artistic communities that attract visitors to Toronto. I argue that the strategic choices and actions of hotel unions in the city are better comprehended with an understanding of the fragmentation and diversity within the hotel workforce and the place of hotel workers in urban tourism development processes shaping 'spaces of consumption'.; The project is located in an emerging sub-discipline of labour geography that seeks to unravel how landscapes are produced by workers through their daily efforts to reproduce themselves materially. The thesis concludes with a call to consider the 'cultural' more rigorously in labour geography and emphasizes the importance of overcoming multiple sources of fragmentation in the hotel sector.