On the picket line

Hilton hotel workers’ contract fight

Chanting, “No contract, no peace!” workers at Hilton Crystal City Hotel in northern Virginia, who have been fighting for a fair contract for more than two years, put teeth into Labor Day by demonstrating at the hotel on Sept. 11. Their call for a hotel boycott got an impressive show of solidarity when the Teachers Union Reform Network cancelled 600 rooms for a three-day event. Represented by UNITE HERE Local 25, the workers risked arrest, as did 12 members who blocked traffic in front of the hotel on June 20. “We’re very thankful for the community’s continued support and we’re going to walk the line until we win,” hotel engineer Rafael Cruz told Union City, the online newsletter of Metro Washington Council AFL-CIO. (Sept. 14)

Fla. tomato grower signs with CIW

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers scored a major win when the East Coast Growers and Packers dropped out of the anti-worker Florida Tomato Growers Exchange and agreed to adopt CIW’s Fair Food agreement, which includes a penny-per-pound raise to harvesters and a stringent pro-worker code of conduct. The raise gives the harvesters, who are predominantly Latinos/as and African Americans, a 62 percent per-bucket raise from 50 to 82 cents. This win adds to CIW’s impressive list of hard-fought-for-and-won employers: Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway and Whole Foods. (Some groups are boycotting anti-union WF because its owner is against health care reform.)

CIW is now targeting major grocery chains like Publix and Kroger and national big-box chains like Costco and Wal-Mart. CIW rolled out its campaign targeting Publix (which Forbes ranked 10th in its 2008 list of largest private companies and Florida’s largest) with a Labor Day Freedom Ride bike tour in Sarasota, Fla. WMNF, Tampa’s community radio station in the Pacifica network, honored CIW with the 2009 WMNF Peace and Justice Award on Sept. 5.

500 groups demand end to immigration police program

A coalition of 500 advocacy groups sent President Obama a letter the week of Aug. 24 demanding the administration end the 287(g) program, which deputizes police to turn over suspects to immigration authorities for possible deportation. The letter, sent by the National Immigration Law Center and signed by groups like the National Day Laborers Organizing Network, noted, “Racial profiling and other civil rights abuses by the local law enforcement agencies that have sought out 287(g) powers have compromised public safety, while doing nothing to solve the immigration crisis.”

NWU denounces Google’s violation of writers’ rights

“Google’s book scanning project is one of the largest cases of copyright infringement since the United States Constitution was adopted in 1789,” said Larry Goldbetter, president of the National Writers Union, United Auto Workers Local 1981. “The multibillion-dollar corporation scanned more than seven million different books without permission from the copyright owners. In an attempt to placate its victims, Google is throwing some crumbs to writers.” (Reuters, Sept. 4) The NWU pointed out that Google, whose gross profit in 2008 was $4.5 billion, is offering writers as little as $60 per infringed book and $15 per infringed article.