Among the different chants, one seemed to sum it up: “Stop the threats, stop the lies, it’s our right to organize!”
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The Santa Clara Hyatt Regency workers have formed a union committee and called for recognition of the “card check” to obtain union certification. Workers report that Hyatt management has responded with intimidation, interrogation and surveillance.
In its own defense, UNITE HERE Local 19, the union involved, called for an informational picket and speak-out in front of the hotel. Over 300 hotel workers and supporters from a large variety of community and labor groups came out for the action.
Featured speakers at the concluding rally included long-time Hyatt workers who described how their working conditions had deteriorated and how intensely they desire affordable employer-provided medical benefits for their families. Such benefits are virtually impossible to obtain without collective bargaining through a union.
A card check involves having workers sign a card indicating their desire for union representation. In most circumstances, the National Labor Relations Board, after certifying that the cards represent a majority of the workers, oversees a union-recognition election.
A union-recognition election may sound fair until you look at what really happens prior to it. The employer invariably proceeds to conduct a well-financed and well-thought-out campaign to vilify and misrepresent the union. Workers are required to attend “staff meetings” where they become a captive audience for the employer and are subjected to anti-union propaganda.
One-on-one meetings between staff members and supervisors are held, and each worker is told: “We’ve always gotten along so well. We’re really friends; we don’t need somebody coming in from outside getting between us.”
Threats and intimidation are used, such as the threat of cutting work hours, firing pro-union workers, suddenly finding fault in previously stellar work performances, and more.
Employers often use stalling tactics to put off elections, sometimes for years. If, in spite of these tactics, a union wins the election, then the employer can be counted on to dispute the results and cause further delay.
The card-check method was developed as an alternative to the traditional practice of seeking union representation through a secret-ballot election. Presently, a card check recognition is only valid when a company voluntarily agrees to recognize a union without election and enters into negotiations.
The Hyatt workers, however, are not letting themselves be dragged down the road of waiting for elections. With chants of “Se ve, se siente, la unión está presente!” (“You can see it, you can feel it, the union is present!”), the workers at the rally reiterated their determination to continue fighting for the card check.
Among the unions represented were California School Employees Association, Municipal Employees Federation, Service Employees International Union and Communications Workers of America.
Members of student and community organizations such as Student Advocates for Higher Education, Silicon Valley De-Bug, the Raging Grannies, San José Peace and Justice Center, Labor Party Organizing Committee and Bay Area ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) also participated.
UNITE HERE members from other hotels and members of other unions voiced messages of solidarity and support.
To strengthen the working class’s right to organize for a union, the AFL-CIO has launched a massive national drive to gather one million signatures of workers—union and non-union—to demand passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.
Should it become law, the Employee Free Choice Act will require automatic union recognition when 50 percent plus one of the workers sign cards. If the company then were to stall in negotiations to prevent a contract from being realized, a neutral arbitrator would impose a first contract. Passage of the act would codify into the law the card-check recognition that workers at the Santa Clara Hyatt and elsewhere must now struggle for.
