We are writing to call attention to the fact that the Great Lakes Bears are inviting people to rent rooms at the Congress Hotel for this year's Bears Pride X event on Memorial Day weekend despite the fact that the hotel's workers are on strike.
People come to Chicago every year for Bear Pride and IML in order to have a good time, and we want for this to happen again this year. People ought to know that they will be crossing a picket line every time they come and go from the Congress. They ought to know about the issues involved in the strike, which include the hotel's refusal to sign the same union contract that all the other major downtown hotels have signed, and the imposition of wage cuts and the loss of health benefits.
And people ought to know that the hotel literally stinks. Customers of the hotel are complaining about filthy conditions and poor service; city inspectors found 68 building code violations in a visit last December, including problems with electrical wiring.
The workers' union, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 1, has offered to find alternative accommodations for the Bear Pride event, as they have for a dozen other groups that had originally scheduled conventions or other gatherings at the hotel.
In fact, four major downtown hotels are willing to host the Bears, and one is even matching the Congress rates.
Sadly, the Great Lakes Bears have ignored these offers, and refused to have a discussion about this issue.
We take this measure of writing a letter to the public after trying to engage the Great Lakes Bears since January, when HERE Local 1 asked us to help locate the Bears and initiate a discussion with them.
While it appears that the Great Lakes Bears will not change their plans as an organization, we urge those planning to attend, or those who have friends coming to town for this event, to visit the strike Web site to read about the issues at stake in the strike, as well as the many testimonials from dissatisfied Congress guests.
We think you'll want to stay somewhere else: www.congresshotelstrike.info .
Queer to the Left