Union
Makes Its Bed
The
Nation - October 25, 2004
By Kelly Candaele & Peter Dreier
On September 29 in San Francisco, 4,000 hotel employees--all
members of the newly merged union UNITE HERE--walked out on
strike or were locked out of their workplaces after their contracts
expired. Other lockouts or strikes are expected shortly in Los
Angeles and Washington, DC. Critical of the labor movement's
fragmentation and weakness in the face of increasing corporate
concentration, HERE's John Wilhelm and UNITE's Bruce Raynor,
the two leaders who orchestrated the merger of their unions
in July, are seeking to provide a model of what a stronger,
more militant union can accomplish. This strike is the first
major test of their strategy.
The decentralized structure of most national unions is a disadvantage
in a world of gigantic national and international corporations.
Earlier this year, for example, 60,000 United Food and Commercial
Workers (UFCW) union members in Southern California ended a
five-month strike against three national retail food chains,
forced to accept what many viewed as an unfavorable deal. The
local unions were successful at keeping their members and customers
out of the Los Angeles-area stores but failed to hurt the stores'
business elsewhere.
In San Francisco, UNITE HERE is resisting the hotels' demands
to remove health coverage for more than 1,000 workers. It is
also battling to keep fully funded pensions and to reduce heavy
workloads. But the ongoing conflict is also about changing the
balance of power between the union and employers. The union
locals in San Francisco, LA and DC want their contracts to expire
on the same timetable as those of locals in New York, Boston,
Chicago, Honolulu and Toronto, which are set to bargain again
in 2006. The locals will be in a far stronger position if they
can negotiate their contracts with the national hotel chains
simultaneously. The hotel chains, of course, want to keep the
union at a strategic disadvantage with staggered contracts.
Today, few hotels are locally owned. The four largest companies--Marriott,
Hilton, Starwood and Hyatt--account for 22 percent of total
room sales in the industry nationwide. The union argues that
there is no good reason why workers making beds and cleaning
toilets in Los Angeles should make $11.02 an hour while their
San Francisco counterparts make $15.09 an hour at the same chain.
According to Maria Elena Durazo, president of UNITE HERE's Local
11 in Los Angeles, "We can't take on national corporations
hotel by hotel, city by city, area by area."
UNITE HERE has spent several years preparing its members for
this conflict. It patiently developed rank-and-file leadership
cadres at each hotel, educated them about tourism industry economics
and brought union workers from other cities to Los Angeles,
San Francisco and Washington to express their solidarity.
Margarita Rubio, one of those rank-and-file workers, is not
afraid of this fight. A housekeeper at the Regent Beverly Wilshire
in LA, she made her way to California in 1981, fleeing what
she calls "persecution from both sides" during the
Salvadoran revolution. Rubio, a single mother, says she is "willing
to sacrifice everything so that my daughter can go to college."
Local 11 members recently voted by an 83 percent margin to authorize
a strike.
The current three-city strategy is part of a bold plan by a
new generation of labor leaders to mobilize their members through
political action, community coalition-building and street protests.
UNITE HERE's membership is composed largely of immigrants who
are not afraid to struggle for a broad view of "citizenship"
that includes workplace rights.
Wilhelm--who is often talked about as a possible successor to
John Sweeney as AFL-CIO president--wants to see more consolidation
of unions and more union resources spent on organizing new workers.
The outcome of his high-stakes strategy may determine whether
he can project himself as someone who can re-energize a diminished
labor movement, which now represents only 13 percent of the
nation's workforce.
To win this strike, it won't be sufficient for the workers simply
to withhold their labor. The hotels can hire strikebreakers.
The union is working to get customers to cancel reservations
at targeted hotels because of concerns about poor service, fear
of crossing a picket line or solidarity with the cause of helping
low-wage workers. The national union and its local affiliates
have worked for several years to forge alliances with a wide
variety of religious, social justice and community groups, many
of which have already canceled meetings and conferences, as
have a number of trade associations and businesses.
Many labor experts view strikes as a last resort, an act of
desperation after negotiations and compromises have failed.
But UNITE HERE leaders know that powerful business and political
forces rarely make significant concessions willingly. After
being battered by plant closings, declining membership and political
defeats, the American labor movement recognizes that if it does
not grow, it will wither away. Unions must re-learn how to battle
effectively. The new members and idealistic organizers who have
flocked to UNITE HERE and other activist unions signed up for
a good fight. They, and their religious and community allies,
have now got one.
More
News About the Los Angeles Hotel Workers' Struggle for a Fair
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