After two years of determined struggle, San Francisco hotel workers achieved a significant labor victory over big hotel chains. Unite Here, Local 2 reached a tentative agreement on a labor contract on Sept 12. Union members are expected to approve the contract on Sept. 22
“We’re ecstatic,” said Unite Here Local 2 union organizer Bruce Patterson. It’s a “magnificent outcome.”
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The tentative agreement granted nearly every single union demand and forced the Multi-Employer Group—the bargaining group that represents the management of 13 luxury hotels—to give up its most odious anti-worker demands. The agreement includes equal healthcare benefits for all employees—not the two-tier system sought by the MEG—and maintenance of current, employer-paid health benefits, among other important things. The hotel owners had demanded that the workers, who earn around $12 per hour on average, start making large co-payments.
A long list of union demands were met, including improved vision and dental plans, increased pension funds, reduced work loads and wage increases.
Non-tipped workers will receive an increase of $3 per hour during the contract’s term, as well as 60 cents for all hours worked between August 2004 and August 2006. Tipped workers will receive $1.50 per hour increase, plus 50 cents for all hours worked between August 2004 and August 2006.
In a significant blow to the MEG’s anti-union program, the hotels agreed to allow card-check to determine whether or not workers at new hotels would choose to be represented by Local 2. This issue is extremely important. Card-check allows union elections to take place without the supervision of the bureaucratic National Labor Relations Board.
It has become increasingly difficult for unions to win elections that go through the long, tortured pro-employer NLRB procedures. The NLRB process mostly serves to benefit employers. Because of this, the MEG had wanted the oversight of the NLRB to continue.
Following the announcement of the tentative agreement, Steve Trent, president of the MEG, issued a smarmy statement expressing the employers’ satisfaction with the results. “There is no better way to recognize our outstanding employees than with one of the best contracts in the industry,” said Trent.
He’s right that it is one of the best contracts in the industry. But to claim that the hotels somehow wanted to “recognize” the workers with a decent labor contract is an outright lie. The hotel workers were forced to labor for two years without any contract at all.
Throughout the two-year struggle, the MEG was confident that it could force the union to submit to its anti-worker terms. But, much to the MEG’s dismay, this never happened. The union pushed back the MEG’s demands and was able to make essential gains.
Hard-won victory
Kelly Dugan, Local 2’s community organizer said, “I see this as a huge victory for all of San Francisco.”
Dugan told PSLweb.org, “We and many other unions are in similar situations, hotels have now become global corporations. So, we realized that we can’t bargain with them on a local basis. We decided to create a strategy that would line up contracts to expire at about the same time. This would leverage our power. The hotels saw the power in this and they made a business decision that it would cost too much if the workers called a boycott or a strike, or if they called a coordinated action.”
Dugan praised the Unite Here membership’s incredible resolve, “It taken a long time. Over many years of organizing, our members have been through struggle after struggle. The workers understand that the hotels don’t just give things away. Hotel workers have health care and pensions because they fought for them and they’ve been willing to do what it takes to get what they need.”
Throughout its struggle with the MEG, Local 2 has developed strong ties with many community, labor, religious and political organizations in San Francisco.
While engaged in intense negotiations with the MEG, Local 2 came out in force for the Labor Day immigrant rights march in San Francisco, marking an important step to tie the organized labor movement to the struggle for immigrant rights. Dugan noted, “90 percent of our workers are immigrants, so it was an issue that was important to us.”
On March 18, the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, an anti-war march of 25,000 people marched to the Hilton, one of the MEG hotels, in solidarity with Local 2. The organized by the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) organized the march. As the protest passed by, union organizers and workers—inside and outside the hotel—held a spirited demonstration.
The Local 2 victory in San Francisco comes amid a wave of hotel worker advances.
On Sept. 9, the members of Chicago’s Unite Here local ratified a three-year contract between the union and Hilton. The contract included wage increases, reduced workloads, improved vision and dental plans, increased pay for workers on disability leave and card-check neutrality.
In Monterey California on Sept. 14, Unite Here, Local 483 agreed to a four-year contract with similar terms. The contract’s wage increase is the largest annual pay raise in Local 483’s history.
Also on Sept. 14, San Jose Doubletree hotel workers voted to form a union.
The San Francisco hotel workers have shown that a prolonged, militant struggle still can defeat the mega-rich, capitalist bosses. Their fight has made clear that, even as unions are under attack, workers can take collective action to maintain existing contract benefits and achieve major gains.
