Hotel workers win new contract

WW photo: Joan Marquardt

Unite Here Local 2 members, the majority of them Asian, Latin@ and Black, have just won a tremendous victory over hotel management. On Sept. 22, over 4,200 hotel workers agreed to ratify a new 5-year contract with 13 first class hotels in the downtown area of San Francisco.

The contract between the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group (SFMEG) and the hotel, restaurant and related service staff is retroactive back to the Aug. 14, 2004 expiration of the previous labor agreement. This victory comes after a two-year battle in which the union workers were locked out of all the hotels for almost two months at this same time two years ago.

Since then, a union-led boycott has continued to this day. It was an uphill fight against the hotel management who planned to quickly defeat the workers and their demands, and in so doing, tried to intimidate tens of thousands of other Bay Area workers into submission at the same time.

When struggles of both organized and unorganized working people all across the U.S. are seeing more and more givebacks, the Local 2 win is an event of nationwide significance. The new contract is seen as a precedent-setting model for upcoming negotiations among some 5,000 additional members of Unite Here in the area and thousands more in cities across the country.

Although not every single demand was met, there were no concessions or “take-backs� either!

Tourism is San Francisco’s top industry and the prolonged stand-off hurt the hotel owners where it is felt the most: their pockets. The hotels, related businesses and the city lost an estimated $46.6 million. At least 10 conventions and conferences moved their events elsewhere to avoid the conflict. And the owners’ hard-nosed intransigence wore very thin among many local businesses.

Even the mayor got involved, brokering a “cooling-off period� at one point, and walking the union picket line. An elected member of the Board of Supervisors was also arrested with 62 union members at a recent sit-in at the doorway of one of the SFMEG-managed hotels, during evening rush hour. So many hundreds of union members rallied around the area that major streets had to be temporarily closed.

Finally, the hotel owners buckled under the financial pressure of the boycott. A success, the boycott reduced reservations and rented rooms, week by week and month after month. Local 2 President Mike Casey stated, “The corporations knew that it cost more to fight than settle with us. It became in their interest to cut a deal.� (San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 13)

Among the contract gains the workers won are the very issues workers all around the country have been fighting for.

One of these is healthcare. Management held out until the very end to get an unfair “two-tier� system. But instead, the union gained improved prescription medication coverage and some other benefits, at no additional cost to the workers. In essence, this contract defeated the two-tier health care system.

Other gains include increased pension benefits, hourly wages, health and safety on the job and a decrease in work loads.

The growing pattern of additional rooms to be cleaned hourly by the employee and the greater weight of the “new and improved� guest-bed mattresses and bedding linens have really physically hurt many workers. Injuries of muscle strain and bone fractures have become a significant work-related health problem, which is now beginning to be taken seriously by management.

The union also won the length of the contract they were asking for all along. The new agreement aligns Local 2 with other major hotel contracts, creating broader industry-wide union strength when their contracts come up for renewal. After all, the owners have had the upper hand through their global chains and joint management associations. Now the workers have stronger bargaining “clout� themselves.

Finally, the right to organize at other hotels in the area is now more secure. Instead of federal National Labor Relations Board-supervised union elections, securing a significant management influence and bias, the unionization of a workplace by the more simple signed “card check� system is now contractually protected.

The win by Unite Here Local 2 is a welcome development during this period of thousands of lay-offs, business closings, defaults on earned and paid-for pensions, and diminishing healthcare and other benefits. As a cable car driver shouted out to the last union picket line here, “Solidarity is the key; solidarity, sisters and brothers.�

Now more than ever the unity shown by the hotel workers, through two long years of struggle, is an inspiration to all working people. As Frederick Douglass said, “Without struggle there can be no progress.�