Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth strike: hotel association asking union to compromise

Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel employees on strike July 28, 2024. (CSN)

The Hotel Association of Greater Montreal is calling on CSN negotiators to make compromises in order to resolve the labour dispute at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in downtown Montreal, which has been ongoing for several months.

At a press conference on Tuesday, the association lamented that the dispute is harming Quebec’s largest hotel, which has 950 rooms, as well as the broader tourism industry in Montreal.

There is currently both a strike and a lockout at the Queen Elizabeth, affecting roughly 600 workers.

The Commerce Federation, which is affiliated with the CSN, confirmed that about 20 of the 30 hotels involved in its coordinated bargaining process have reached a deal.

Through this process, the unions affiliated with the Commerce Federation coordinate their negotiations with one another. The federation aims to secure an initial agreement with one hotel operator, then seeks to apply its terms to other hotels, even if the employers are different. In this case, the first tentative agreement was reached with the Hilton in Laval in September 2024.

The dispute

According to the union federation, the reason the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth has yet to reach a deal is because it relies more heavily than other hotels on staffing agencies — a practice the union opposes.

The hotel’s general manager, David Connor, confirmed that the hotel uses agencies, but said he has little choice due to the size of the hotel and the varying room occupancy levels from month to month.

He noted that agency use is already regulated in the collective agreement. Nevertheless, he said the hotel has offered to phase out the use of staffing agencies entirely by 2028.

Despite that offer, no agreement has been reached between the parties. Connor said the hotel is willing to accept the other terms that have been accepted by the other hotels involved in the coordinated talks.

Dominique Villeneuve, president and CEO of the Hotel Association of Greater Montreal, said that rather than taking a conciliatory approach, the CSN federation is “engaging in one-upmanship.”

“It’s important to note that employees at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth already enjoy the best wages in Quebec’s hotel industry. For example, the current base hourly wage for room attendants is $28, while the provincial pay scale for that role is typically between $19 and $21. Under the proposed agreement, those same room attendants would earn just over $31 per hour this year. These are excellent working conditions,” Villeneuve said.

Michel Valiquette, head of the hotel sector at the Commerce Federation, responded: “How can the Queen Elizabeth complain about the length of a dispute it created itself? Should we remind them they threw 600 workers out on the street on November 20? Workers have been locked out for five months.”

“If the Queen Elizabeth and the Hotel Association of Greater Montreal truly want to reach a deal, they should accept the proposal we made to them several weeks ago. The Queen Elizabeth must commit — like all the major Montreal hotels involved in the coordinated talks — to eliminating the use of staffing agencies. The parameters of the deal are already known. This conflict could have been resolved long ago if the employer would just abandon its aggressive anti-union campaign,” Valiquette said.

Negotiations at the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth have been particularly difficult. The Administrative Labour Tribunal has had to intervene on several occasions, at the request of both the union and the employer.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French April 22, 2025.

By Lia Lévesque, The Canadian Press