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NEWS & LETTERS, December 2004Locked out hotel workers returnSan Francisco—Several members of ILWU Local 10, San Francisco Labor Council, and UNITE-HERE Local 2 held a rally at shopper and tourist-bustling Union Square on Saturday, Nov. 20, to support workers locked out of 14 San Francisco hotels since Oct. 13. Local 2 Secretary-Treasurer Toh Thi Do explained that the main point of contention was health care. She said some 1,000 employees would have to pay ten times more for health insurance while their wages would only increase 5-20 cents per hour. After the union voted to authorize a strike, four of the 14 hotels organized by Local 2 were targeted for a two-week walkout. Managers, representing chains such as Hyatt, Hilton, OMNI, and Four Seasons, responded by locking out 4,000 workers at the remaining ten hotels. Just before the rally the bosses declared the lockout over. Apparently they had finally begun to see the logic of Local 2 negotiators, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and a growing list of sympathetic organizations. A 60-day cooling off period, during which contract talks will resume, began when workers returned to their jobs Nov. 23. A spokeswoman for Rigoberta Menchu Tum read a solidarity statement to the crowd. The 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner was to deliver a keynote address to the American Anthropological Association at the S.F. Hilton, but she refused to cross the picket line. Keith Shanklen of ILWU Local 10 read a statement of encouragement from Japanese postal and railroad workers. He had been with the Local 10 delegation that recently met with laborers in Japan. The delegation returned with picket signs written in Chinese and Korean supporting the locked out workers. Many hotel employees are Chinese and Korean immigrants. After the rally roughly 300 marchers, led by dozens of hotel workers (mostly Asian women and Latinas), proceeded to some of the affected hotels and carried on energetic picket lines at each. The final picket line, single file around the Hyatt Regency at Embarcadero Center, was greeted with cheers and raised fists from workers out of the myriad cafes and boutiques that ring the hotel building’s street level. —David Mizuno’Oto |
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