 Striking San Francisco hotel workers set up loud picket lines outside four luxury hotels. Photo: Bill Hackwell |
These were the words of UNITE HERE Local 2 president Mike Casey on the last day of the five-week hotel lockout in San Francisco. The lockout threw 4,300 hotel workers—bellhops, room-cleaners, dishwashers, waiters and others—out of their jobs and onto the picket line.
At the end of the lockout on Nov. 20, a sense of celebration and a collective sigh of relief were almost audible throughout the city. For 38 days, workers had maintained vigilant 24-hour picket lines in front of 14 of San Francisco’s swankiest hotels. Now they were going back to work before the holidays. And a 60-day “cooling-off” period was forcing the employers back to the bargaining table without the threat of another lockout or strike.
The multi-billion dollar transnational hotel management corporations, like Hilton and Hyatt, represented by the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group (SFMEG), had hoped to break the workers’ will by locking them out of their jobs indefinitely. But after five weeks of strong picket lines, the popular chant “one day longer, one day stronger!” proved true, as Local 2 returned to the bargaining table with greater leverage.
Health care a key issue
Like almost every other labor dispute in recent years, a key point of struggle is health care. Most hotel jobs pay low wages, but the workers have fought hard to maintain affordable health benefits for full and part-time workers, retirees and their families.
Health care industry profits are going through the roof, yet the cost of health care is also rising. As health care costs rise, employers seek to pass off these increases to workers. Hotel bosses want to increase workers’ co-pays from $10 per month to $273 per month by the end of a proposed five-year contract. This would mean loss of health coverage for most workers.
Workload is another major issue. The tourism and hospitality business took combined hits in 2001 from the economic downturn and Sept. 11. Hotels laid off almost one-third of their workforce in San Francisco. But when tourism began to pick up again the hotels increased the workload of those who remained rather than rehiring the workers. Many workers do two to three times as much work for the same pay. (“The State of the Hotel Industry,” Local 2 Factsheet)
The union is also fighting for decent wage increases, pension benefits and the right to organize at new hotels.
Fighting hotel consolidation
Perhaps the most acrimonious struggle is over the contract expiration date.
Consolidation has been the trend in the hotel industry over the past 20 years. 95 percent of hotels in San Francisco are owned by national or international corporations. Sixty percent are owned by the big five—Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Marriott and Starwood. Starwood, which owns Westin, Sheraton and other major chains, operates in 80 countries and made $309 million in profits last year. (“Consolidation in the Hotel Industry,” Local 2 Factsheet) This virtual monopoly of profits and power further undermines local unions’ bargaining power.
In response to these conditions, UNITE HERE is seeking two-year, rather than five-year, contracts across the country. They want to align the contract expiration dates for hotel workers in major cities, including San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston, as well as Hawaii. Rather than bargaining for 2,000 workers in one city and 3,000 workers in another, the union wants to negotiate contracts for 73,000 workers at the same time.
Blocking national contract unity among hotel workers is a top priority for the big hotels. Until the final days of the lockout, hotel bosses refused any further negotiations until Local 2 took the demand for a 2006 contract expiration date off the table.
 Anti-racist protest in San Francisco’s Castro district, Oct. 1, 2004 Photo: Bill Hackwell |
An important demand by Local 2 is new contract language to set up a diversity committee that would work to increase the percentage of African American hires. For years, UNITE HERE has fought for and won protections for immigrant workers, a reflection of the needs of its multinational membership.
About 48 percent of Local 2’s workers are Asian/Pacific Islander, 33 percent are Latino, 16 percent are white, and 5 percent are Black. (Carol Zabin, “The Wages and Self-Sufficiency of Unionized Hotel Workers in San Francisco,” UC Berkeley Labor Center Study, Sept. 29, 2004) African American workers waged militant struggles in the 1960s to gain jobs in San Francisco hotels, but since then African American employment in the hotel industry has steadily declined. (San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 19, 2004)
Last year, UNITE HERE helped build the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, which brought African American civil rights leaders together with immigrant workers in the struggle for immigrant rights. The demand for an increase in hiring African Americans shows a further recognition of these communities’ shared interests. It helps deepen solidarity and unity between them. This kind of unity in the labor movement will be important in waging the battles to come.
Workers drive wedge between capitalists
The hotel workers’ contract expired on Aug. 14, 2004. After a month of negotiations, Local 2 members voted by 97 percent to authorize a strike, a strong demonstration of their readiness to fight. Thousands of workers and their supporters turned out for rallies in support of the union’s demands. Not long after, Local 2 workers targeted four hotels with a two-week strike in response to a deadlock in negotiations. The SFMEG immediately struck back with a lockout in 10 other hotels. After two weeks, the lockout continued in all 14 hotels.
The offensive lockout was meant to pressure the workers into compliance. But the workers responded with well-organized, militant picket lines outside each hotel. The 4,300 locked-out workers took six-hour shifts and maintained picket lines around the clock. Noise was one of the workers’ key weapons. Following noise ordinances, the picketers could use bullhorns and chanting from 5 a.m. to midnight. The boisterous picket lines constantly reminded guests, management and neighboring businesses and residents that the workers were locked out of their jobs.
The bosses refused to budge unless the union took the two-year contract expiration date off the table. Local 2 made it clear that they were ready to return to work at any time, but they wouldn’t give up that demand.
Meanwhile, labor and community support for the hotel workers grew. Various unions and progressive organizations, like the ANSWER Coalition, “adopted” hotels. These groups brought members to strengthen the picket lines. Solidarity from other workers in San Francisco was demonstrated through honking horns, encouraging words, and donations of money and food.
In addition to maintaining strong picket lines in San Francisco, Local 2 sent workers to Chicago, Honolulu and Monterey to join hotel workers there in daylong picket lines. In New York, over 1,000 hotel workers rallied in support of the San Francisco workers. Solidarity rallies were held in Seattle and Baltimore, as well. In London, trade unionists leafleted at the InterContinental hotel in Hyde Park and German unionists met with Local 2 workers.
In Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles hotel workers are also working under expired contracts. They continue to fight against the same hotel bosses. In Los Angeles, workers announced a boycott of nine luxury hotels.
Many San Francisco guests chose to not to cross the picket lines, and numerous banquets, showcases and events were canceled. The American Anthropological Association moved its meeting and over 5,000 conferees to Atlanta. This resulted in the loss of an estimated $3 million in revenue to the city, a fact not lost on the San Francisco “business community.” (San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 21, 2004) Normally busy Union Square establishments reported major business losses.
Exact figures on the impact of the lockout on the 14 hotels and the overall San Francisco economy have yet to be determined. The drop in occupancy during the lockout was likely greater than 10 percent. UNITE HERE estimated that this would cost hotels $32 million. (Ian Lewis, “San Francisco’s Hotel Industry: The Industry, The Lockout, and Their
Effects on San Francisco’s Economy,” UNITE HERE, Oct. 22, 2004) This drop had a ripple effect throughout San Francisco’s large tourism industry. Moreover, losses from hotel tax revenues cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in public financing.
On Oct. 22, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors held a hearing on the lockout’s impact on the city and the workers. Two days later, Mayor Gavin Newsom called for a 90-day cooling off period to end the lockout. Newsom’s intervention was a shock to many. In the recent mayoral elections, he was widely understood as the anti-homeless, big-business candidate, and the rich hotels were primary supporters. Local 2 was one of the few unions that campaigned for his Green Party opponent.
The SFMEG quickly turned down Newsom’s appeal. The next day, Newsom joined the picket lines. The wedge that the union was slowly driving between different forces in San Francisco’s “business community” went deeper.
Hotel operators lashed out against Newsom’s public stance supporting the workers. San Francisco police officers were then pulled from monitoring the picket lines. All city business was directed away from the 14 hotels.
On Oct. 28, the State of California ruled that the locked-out workers would qualify for unemployment insurance. This gave a needed boost to the union, which had already spent $1.8 million during the strike and lockout. (San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 29, 2004)
But the employers refused to end the lockout, no doubt hoping for a repeat of the southern California grocery strike. They hoped their rich coffers would enable them to outlast the workers and push the union into making big concessions.
With the holiday season approaching, the workers and their supporters were anxious. December 1 was the cut-off date for medical benefits. Local 2 attempted to withdraw $4.4 million from a joint trust fund with the employers, the estimated funds needed to cover 2 months of medical insurance for the workers. But the hotel bosses voted against the withdrawal, sending the issue to arbitration. At a Local 2 press conference, pregnant and gravely ill workers spoke about the seriousness of the situation.
Then, on Nov. 16, Kaiser Permanente granted the union’s request to extend workers’ medical benefits for two more months. In the following days, Chinese Community Health Plan and PacifiCare announced they would also extend benefits to the remaining locked-out workers.
With these new developments, it became clear to the hotels that the picket lines were not going away. In fact, it appeared they were getting stronger.
The lockout finally fell apart when the representatives of the hotels’ actual owners—large investment groups and pension funds—began to split with the SFMEG, which represents the local hotel operators. “The owners came in—looked at the picket lines and did not like what they saw.” (San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 22, 2004)
This important division between bourgeois forces—in this case the hotel owners and the hotel managers, as well as within the San Francisco business elite—was a direct result of the strength of the hotel workers’ picket lines and support from their allies. On Nov. 20, the SFMEG agreed to a 60-day cooling off period, without its earlier conditions, and the two sides returned to the bargaining table.
The hotel workers’ struggle is not over. Both sides are returning to the bargaining table where the SFMEG will try to force concessions on the union.
But for now hotel workers are back on the job. They know that the power of unity and struggle has strengthened their hand. As housekeeper Bemela Chanan said, “I’m not really worried, but if I have to fight and go out again, I would go out. … This fight is still on.”
