At a downtown Holiday Inn hotel miles away from the city's glamorous 5-star properties, Estradita Gayoso, a housekeeper at the hotel walks the picket line every morning. She is one of the approximately 4,000 city hotel workers who have been on strike since Oct. 1. They are demanding a better-paying contract, health care benefits and the right to renegotiate in two years -- and are staunch in their resolve.

Gayoso, originally from the Philippines, sat on the steps to a side entrance to the hotel while taking a break. She has been a cleaning person there for the past 30 years and says this is her first strike. She says the long hours on the picket line are worth it if she can obtain better health care benefits for her and her two children.

"We feel we have to do it," said Cecilia Morelos, also from the Philippines. "It's not a very good experience." She says her son had planned to go to college in December but she says instead she told him that he must get a job. "I'm locked out."

A bartender, Mandy Tom remembers her grandfather came to the United States from China to build the railroads, while her grandmother worked in a sweatshop. The anti-union stance of the hotels, she says, is a return to the past.

A major sticking point of the negotiations has been the duration of the contract. Union negotiators want the expiration to coincide with the expiration of other hotel contracts across the country, boosting their leveraging power nationwide.

"It's a matter of survival. We can't just fight alone," said Valerie Lapin, spokesperson for Unite Here, which represents the hotel workers and has 440,000 working members nationwide.

"We have to respond to the consolidation of hotel ownership," Lapin adds. "Decisions are being made at a corporate level outside the city. These companies have tremendous power. The only way to level that is to work with other locals around the country."
Lapin said that in about 30 cities across the nation, locals were doing a variety of activities, such as leafleting, to show their support for San Francisco.

As in San Francisco, workers in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., have been in negotiations with hotel management for months. They are trying to protect their health benefits, pensions, wage hikes, workloads and the right to an agreement that expires or can be reopened in 2006. Union leaders say a two-year contract would begin to restore a balance of power with the national hotel companies. They have the support of Mayor Gavin Newsom, going against the San Francisco hotels that helped elect him.

Those hotels, meanwhile, are pushing for a five-year contract.

Cornell Fowler, who represents the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group (SFMEG) -- the bargaining unit for 14 of San Francisco's leading hotels -- said rank-and-file could care less about the two-year sticking point.

Fowler said that negotiating a two-year contract would be disastrous for the city because conventions are planned two years in advance.

"If we agree to a two-year contract, no way would any conventions come to San Francisco. Planners would not come here after what they've seen happens during a strike," Fowler said.

In Atlantic City, 10,000 Unite Here workers are walking the picket line at seven casinos. They are looking to get a contract expiration date of 2007 to merge with the expiration contract date for Las Vegas workers. Again, the strategy is about power through numbers.

Union leaders say they learned much through last year's grocery strike in California. Although the strike was effective, "it wasn't enough," said Unite Here's Lapin. In that case, some 70,000 workers went on strike. Although there was much community support, information about the strike wasn't broad-based.

For instance, in the Bay Area, few people were aware of the Southern California strike.

"People were still shopping in Bay Area grocery stores. When they found out about that strike, they honored it here but by that time, it was too late," Lapin said.

As a result, the workers didn't have the power or the pull to seriously bring store negotiators to the table.

The hotels stringently try to dissuade workers that their union is acting in their best interest. "I am very disappointed to tell you," writes the hotel representative, "that because of your union's continued insistence on a two-year deal, the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group will not agree to end this lockout."

Her union said they might not return to work until January, Estradita Gayoso said. "We don't know yet."