On the picket line

Hotel workers rolling strikes

The latest San Francisco hotel workers to hold a three-day strike, beginning Nov. 18, were those at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. Three-day rolling strikes at upscale hotels began at the Grand Hyatt on Nov. 5 and spread to the Palace Hotel on Nov. 13. A boycott of those hotels, as well as Le Méridien and Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf, has been called by UNITE HERE Local 2, which represents the 9,000 room cleaners, cooks, dishwashers, bell persons, servers and bartenders at 62 high-end hotels. Their contract expired on Aug. 14, and ever since they’ve marched, picketed and rallied.

The hotel magnates are trying to force the workers to accept a contract that jacks up their health care premiums. But workers like Lupe Chavez, a Hilton room cleaner for 29 years, see through the bosses’ demands. “We made them millions of dollars, and they complain about paying insurance,” she said in an article posted Sept. 25 on www.unitehere2.org. ¡La lucha continúa!

Native farmers charge USDA with loan discrimination

Thousands of Native American farmers and ranchers brought a class-action lawsuit in 1999 charging that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s loan programs discriminated against them between 1981 and 1999. The plaintiffs are hoping their lawsuit, filed in 1999, will finally be settled under the Obama administration. (After African-American farmers filed a complaint earlier this year against the USDA for failing to adequately notify class members of the 2000 filing deadline for their lawsuit won in 1999, President Obama requested an additional $1.25 billion for those who missed the deadline.)

In April the new secretary of the USDA called for an independent study of past and pending civil rights complaints, citing a 2008 Government Accountability Office report that the USDA’s civil rights office had not addressed its backlog of complaints. The lawyer for the Native suit estimates that plaintiffs are owed up to $1 billion in lost income.

The problem is succinctly summed up by Montana rancher Luther Crasco, who declared bankruptcy after being denied a USDA loan for a crucial irrigation system: “When [Native farmers are forced to] sell out, it’s a white man that buys the land, because there ain’t no Indian around here who can secure a loan.” (Washington Post, Sept. 29)  

CLUW defends women’s reproductive freedom

At its national convention in October the Coalition of Labor Union Women passed a resolution supporting comprehensive health care for all, including the need for safe, legal, accessible reproductive health services for all women.

On Nov. 14 CLUW issued a statement affirming that “Women must have the right to make their own childbearing decisions—this is our civil right. We are outraged by the Stupak amendment to the Affordable Health Care for America Act (HR3962). ... [It] prohibits women who receive federal subsidies from using their own personal, private funds to buy insurance plans that include abortion services. ... Health care reform must not come at the expense of women.”

The statement urged union members to sign petitions opposing the Stupak amendment at the Web sites of the Planned Parenthood Federation and the National Partnership of Women & Families.

S.F. Labor Council condemns Honduran election

Following up on a resolution passed in September condemning the June coup d’etat in Honduras, the San Francisco Labor Council unanimously passed a resolution on Nov. 23 “in solidarity with the heroic people of Honduras as they resist the savage repression of a military dictatorship, and fight to win real democracy and sovereignty for their country.”

In addition to sending official letters to congressional representatives and President Obama detailing a list of five demands for measures that should be taken immediately against the illegal government, the resolution requested that the U.S. “denounce and refuse to recognize the results of the Nov. 29th elections or any electoral process organized under the repressive coup regime.”

The Council is mandated to work with other labor and community organizations “to develop a reliable support network for the National Resistance Front against the Coup, and for the labor unions that are at the center of the Resistance movement in Honduras.”