San Francisco Hotel Workers on Strike
2004Rebecca Doran 2004-10The page as the paper published it (Wayback Machine) →
From the paper's own web edition, recovered from the Internet Archive: the text as the paper put it online, not machine-read. The printed issue of October 2004 is not held.
by Rebecca Doran
Since Oct. 2, upscale tourist destinations here have been alive with the sound of clanging pots and lively chanting—the sounds of a strike.
On Sept. 29, 1400 members of UNITE HERE Local 2 launched a strike against four major hotels. This followed the break-down of negotiations over health care and benefits when hotel managers announced they would refuse to address the union’s concerns if the workers continued to demand a two-year contract, synchronized to expire with the contracts of other hotel workers in major cities nationwide. Hotel management is demanding a five-year contract.
On Oct. 1, the 10 other leading hotels belonging to the employers’ cartel locked out about 4000 of their workers. I spent a few afternoons walking the picket line with the workers, many of whom are minorities and immigrants. Most of the workers agreed that the bosses, management of the nation’s largest and wealthiest hotel chains, were turning their work into "K-Mart jobs."
Workers stressed fears that this lockout is an excuse for the hotels to speed up the layoff process. "Twenty-five percent of the staff was laid off permanently," said one picketer. "Their business is back to almost record levels, why do they have to lay us off?" Other workers yelled, "We wanna see the books!"
This article first appeared in the October 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.