by Daphna Whitmore
Unite Hotels Organiser

Standing outside Auckland’s Centra Airport hotel at 4pm the noise of tooting cars is deafening. There are fifty people lining the curb of the busy street with placards saying Toot for Support, On Strike, Stronger Together. The music is pumping, the picket line is almost dancing.
This is the third strike in three weeks.
Centra staff want a 5 percent pay rise – roughly an extra $20 or $30 a week - to help pay the bills. Most are on just $12 or $13 an hour. Many are on part-time hours; some weeks they don’t earn enough to pay the rent and put food on the table. Some are deeply in debt to loan sharks.
They can barely afford to go on strike, but the prospect of poverty wages for another year is too miserable. On the picket line is Brendon Sheehan, the nephew of Lope Muliaga who works in the kitchen at the Centra. Lopa’s wife died after their power was cut, and Brendon has come along to support the strike and send a message of support from his grieving family.
The hotel is owned by the InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG). It’s the biggest hotel chain in the world and employs over 12,000 people.
The CEO of InterContintental Hotels, Andrew Coslett, is on a salary of $2.4million a year and in 2006 the company had an after tax profit of $606 million. Last year the IHG hotels won the MAXX hotel awards for the most profitable hotels in the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand.
That profit was made by the people working in the hotels - making the beds, preparing the meals, clearing the tables, pouring the drinks, vacuuming the floors, answering the phones and greeting the guests. At the very least they deserve a living wage.