Forum - View topicNEWS: S. California Hotel Workers Union Authorizes Possible Strike as Early as Anime Expo Weekend
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RockSplash
Posts: 502 |
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Good on them. I know ANN is an anime website, I also feel they are REALLY doing this because comic con is right around the corner, which has a much larger audience and uses hotels in the worst way.
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R. Kasahara
 Posts: 708 |
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Seconded. I hope the union gets what they want. |
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GNX903VSBrave
 Posts: 26 |
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I've been following this story and I've been told that one of the affected hotels includes the JW Marriott, which is actually part of the venue space for the con. Suffice to say that certain events and panels could be at risk, in addition to the disruptions to people's accommodations.
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5936 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Would they have to cancel the convention, or can they get by without them?
If they had to cancel the Anime Expo Convention at this late date, that would be a very expensive hit for the many vendors, artists, and for the convention itself, unless they have some form of 'strike' insurance, which they probably don't. |
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kpossibles
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 149 Location: USA |
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Good for them. I keep hearing about hotel workers constantly being overworked with less people on staff as they haven't hired back the amount of workers needed post-peak pandemic, but also keep the same standards.
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Hard to say. 90% of the con is in a convention center, not hotels, so they could maybe just scale it back. The problem would be all the attendees/guests suddenly not having hotel rooms and likely having to skip the event, and then asking for badge refunds, which they don't normally provide. It'd be a real mess. Can't say I'd feel bad for AX's overlords after the shenanigans they've pulled lately, and a similar callous capitalist mindset from hotel franchises is the entire reason this is happening. Though this could potentially hurt a lot of artists and vendors, to say nothing of the fans in general. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2312 Location: Online Terminal |
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The thing is, the SPJA is and should, act like a business. Even the most conservative back of the napkin estimates have them taking in 8-figure revenues every year. There needs to be a certain standard of decision-making and accountability that is beyond the stereotypical "I want to throw a big party with my friends and invite everyone" that you get at smaller shows. That being said, there's a difference between acting like a business and acting like a corporation, and its the latter that's causing all of *gesticulates wildly* |
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AJ (LordNikon)
 Posts: 516 Location: Kyoto |
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I would be looking at canceling the convention in all seriousness or pray union settles for less. Not many MNC that run yearly budgets will be able to meet mid-year eat $5/hr/empl in labour manpower/hour budgets. Average ANN has no clue on corporate budget works, but companies can not shift money from one budget to another without triggering investigation. There are laws about this; very strict laws (My wife of 55 years was comptroller for Toyota can talk hours about this (she has)). This is 40m USD per month, no budget has that much room in it. But, good news is 90% of these hotels are privately owned, bad news is, doubt any of them can afford that either. Better luck next year AX.
EDIT: Grammar cause my grandson yelled at me about it |
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TarsTarkas
Posts: 5936 Location: Virginia, United States |
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It doesn't sound like this is an issue with the convention, bur rather with the hotels, and the hotels control the convention center.
The convention doesn't pay the hotel employees, the hotel does. While many of you don't care about the convention itself taking a major financial hit, it is everyone else that you should. If you didn't pay extra for reimbursable airline fare or paid for insurance that covers this type of thing, you are out of money. Sure you might have airline credit of some sort, but if you don't fly that much.... For the major hotel brands, as long as you cancel within a couple of days of your visit, you should be okay for refunds. Who knows for the smaller brands, and some of those bread and breakfasts can be brutal with cancellations. For some vendors, this is there big pay day. My comic book store doesn't make a profit from instore sales, but rather off of convention sales. If this was Otakon, It would have seriously hurt. Just like the Writer's Strike, all those names on the movie and TV credits, most of them are unemployed while the strike grinds on. They can't work anywhere in their career field. Not saying nobody should strike or fight for higher pay, but we shouldn't be cheering so loud for the financial hit the convention might take, as there is a lot of collateral damage for the smaller folk. |
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StarDango
Posts: 102 |
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Consider me one of the smaller folk. Selling at Artist Allies is one of my forms of income and it’s A LOT of investment. Not just financial either. Think of how much effort it takes to make your art and the time it takes to get merchandise printed. If all the time and money I invested into prepping for AX is heavily affected by this, losing out on a hotel would be the least of my worries. And I’m not sure why the comments here are cheering against AX when it’s all about the hotels in the area. I don’t know a lot about the SPJA or what they’ve done. And I don’t have any seething distaste for “big corpos” either. I’m just a no-name artist who needs conventions to help me financially get by. I’m worried about my biggest event for sales for the year being affected. |
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Daerian
 Posts: 238 |
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Let's pray union gets all they want.
If you cannot pay your employers living wage, you have no business of running business.
I don't really see why people should cheer for convention to have problems at all, the strike is against hotel chains. Expo is collateral too. |
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Vanadise
 Posts: 531 |
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There's definitely some irony here... Convention center contracts are usually booked years in advance, and the people running the convention cannot simply cancel. Doing so for any reason that isn't outlined in their contract (and striking hotel workers definitely isn't in the contract) would result in them losing everything they're paying the convention center and possibly losing their contract, and most conventions operate on such a tight budget that losing that much money would result in the convention shutting down entirely. (disclaimer: I'm not familiar with AX's finances, maybe they've got enough in the bank that they could survive losing an entire year's worth of revenue) Of course, that's on top of all of the bad will they'd earn from all of their guests, staff, and attendees, many of whom have nonrefundable tickets/lodging and would be out thousands of dollars. There are plenty of guests who would refuse to go to a specific convention again after they got the rug pulled out from under them at the last minute once. All of the major hotel chains are massively profitable. They make billions of dollars per year in revenue, most of which goes into the pockets of upper executives and shareholders. They can absolutely afford to pay their workers better and still make a ton of money; the only reason to not give the union what they want is greed. |
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Krisqo
Posts: 2 |
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I honestly despise all unions and can not support them in any way. This is coming from someone who been in a union for nearly 20 years. This is also in southern California so you ain't living off of anything under $25/h. Hell, my ceiling is $14/h in southern PA.
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4641 |
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True enough. In 2021, several conventions got a lot of push back for holding an event at all, and the reason given for holding them, despite very real health concerns, was that absent a government intervention of some sort prohibiting it, the contracts with convention centers had the convention organizers in a bind where they'd quite possibly see the whole thing go under if they didn't do it. At most, AX staff would have a reason to try to put some pressure on the hotels to try to work something out with the union, but when they're days out from the event, there is no way they could cancel. The most I'd expect them to do is maybe skip anything that is held offsite, but even then, I could see the timing meaning they'll look to rearrange where AX has people and try to handle it themselves if the hotels can't do it. |
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blooperboy
 Posts: 138 |
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Covid made a LOT of con-runners familiar with the legal idea of force force majeure. Its this clause in some contracts that basically says 'in cases where something comes out of COMPLETE LIFT FIELD then the contract can be cancelled at no fault to either party.' (The literal translation is something akin to 'an act of god') But even then, if you've put in your downpayments, then sometimes you STILL have to bite the bullet and hold the event because you'd lose the deposit.
Here's hoping that the union is able to use the even as pressure to come a satisfying and quick resolution! |
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