San Francisco Hotel Workers Walk Out

*Story updated on November 10

Hotel workers at Grand Hyatt Union Square in San Francisco walked off the job last Thursday, announcing a three-day strike. Members of UNITE HERE Local 2, they’ve called for customers to honor an ongoing boycott at the hotel.

Mike Casey, president of Local 2, called the action “a limited strike” in a statement. “It`s intended to send a clear signal to this corporation that they cannot use a temporary downturn to permanently drive down workers’ living standards.”

As the first strike wound down, 350 more union members at San Francisco's Palace Hotel walked out early Tuesday morning, calling a three-day action against Starwood, which runs several luxury hotels in the city.

The strikes are the first work stoppages in the city since 92 percent of union members voted to authorize strikes against 31 of the city’s upscale hotels on October 22. About of 3,000 of the local’s 9,000 hotel workers cast ballots.

Local 2 points out that Hyatt hasn’t done much to bolster its public image lately: in late August it replaced 98 housekeepers at three non-union Hyatts in Boston with workers hired through a subcontractor at half the pay. Meanwhile Hyatt’s CEO took home $6.7 million last year, and its chairman received a bonus of $1.4 million.

The strikes come during a major push at San Francisco hotels, where contract talks continue with five big chains. Managers responded to a strike at four hotels during the 2004 contract struggle by locking out workers at 10 more properties in San Francisco, a battle that lasted 53 days.

This year’s San Francisco fight is part of UNITE HERE’s nationally coordinated contract campaign—known as Hotel Workers Rising—that centers on building “bargain to organize” deals in its Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles hubs that allow it to expand while raising contract standards.

Along with their push to defend contract standards, the San Francisco workers are attempting to win organizing rights at three hotels in the Bay Area, where drives are at a tipping point.

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More than 1,200 Local 2 members, their families, and community supporters converged outside the Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco last week for an all-day picket. The siege called attention to their struggle with five major hotel corporations—the Hyatt, Starwood, Intercontinental, Hilton, and The Fairmont—since mid-August to achieve a contract.

The hotels propose many cuts, although they have still managed to generate more than $200 billion in profits across the nation over the past decade. Though offers differ, they all threaten benefits across the board. Management proposals include limiting employer contributions for health care, combining job classifications, increasing workloads, slashing starting wages by up to 25 percent, and demanding long contracts instead of the one- or two-year deals the union wants.

Local 2 submitted a one-year proposal on November 2, in efforts to avert a strike at Hilton. The proposal calls for keeping health coverage affordable for the coming year, which included a demand that employers chip in $55 more a month for each worker to shoulder increased health care costs. The union also proposed maintaining pension levels and increasing wages between 15 cents and 30 cents an hour. Annual salaries for unionized housekeepers in San Francisco are around $30,000, says Riddhi Mehta, a staffer at Local 2. Adopting union demands would increase labor costs at hotel companies less than 2 percent, the local said.

Workers at the city's other hotels remain on the job, for now. They await the call for more strike actions from the union’s 125-member bargaining committee.

The negotiations have frustrated Elita Judge, a housekeeper at the Hotel Vitale who sits on the union’s bargaining committee.

“Every company blames the economy [and] the high costs of health care,” she says, noting concern with threatened cuts in health coverage and salary. She hopes the union’s pressure serves as a “wake-up call” to management. But if managers don’t wise up, she doesn’t see hotel workers backing down any time soon.

“We are still solid,” she said, “and ready to fight!”

Correction: Due to an editing error, the story originally reported that this year's contract talks are proceeding with a multi-employer group. The negotiations are occurring separately with each major hotel chain.

Catherine-Mercedes B. Judge is a volunteer on the Local 2 Media Action Committee and the daughter of a 10-year Local 2 member who works at Hotel Vitale.