Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Local 17 stepped up the heat on the Holiday Inn Rivercentre with a demonstration June 13 that organizers said was just the beginning of a bigger campaign against the anti-union hotel.

Holiday Inn management may “be possessed with the idea that this is just a little rowdiness on the sidewalk in front of their business establishment,” Minnesota AFL-CIO President Bernard Brommer told a crowd of more than 100 people gathered in front of the hotel. “We're going to keep coming back and we're going to keep telling the story of how you treat your employees. We're going to make sure your life is just as miserable if not more so than the trouble you've created for your workers.”

The hotel, formerly a Days Inn, was recently renovated to take advantage of its location across from the new Xcel Energy Center. It reopened as a Holiday Inn, but management refused to rehire any of the Days Inn employees or honor their union contract.

Vicki Amundson, a former laundry aide at the hotel, was one of the 35 workers who lost their jobs. She said she will not forget. “Judgment day is coming,” she told the crowd. Marchers responded by chanting, “Holiday Inn — shame on you!”

The Days Inn owners took on a new majority partner before they switched to a Holiday Inn franchise, and they maintain they are a new company not bound by the union contract.

Five members of the clergy attempted to deliver a letter to the hotel manager, urging him to recognize the union and rehire the workers. The ministers, who belong to the Twin Cities Religion Labor Network, said they were told he was unavailable and they left the letter with the acting manager.

The demonstration was part of the AFL-CIO's “Seven Days in June,” a campaign to focus on worker rights. View a complete schedule of Seven Days in June events for Minnesota.