San Francisco UNITE HERE Local 2 hotel workers march to the Grand Hyatt before getting arrested for blocking the hotel's entrance. PHOTO BY: David Bacon.

By David Bacon

On Labor Day, John Wilhelm, president of the hospitality division of UNITE HERE, the union for hotel, restaurant, garment and laundry workers, joined leaders and members of San Francisco Local 2, in getting arrested for blocking the entrance to the Grand Hyatt Hotel just off Union Square. The union targeted the Grand Hyatt for this act of civil disobedience because it is one of the holdouts among the 14 hotels in the Multi Employer Group which refused to make efforts to come to an agreement with the union on a new contract. Local 2’s agreement with the MEG expired over a year ago. The 14 hotels locked out the union’s members for nine weeks last fall, but were forced to take them back after a wave of community and labor support convinced even San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that they were willing to damage the city’s tourist industry rather than reach a new agreement.

The key issues Local 2 is fighting for are: 1) to uphold the union standard of affordable health care for workers, their families and retirees; 2) wage increases that meet the rising cost of living in the Bay Area; 3) decent pensions so workers who have spent decades working in San Francisco’s high profile tourism industry can retire in dignity; 4) to allow non-union workers in San Francisco and San Mateo counties to choose whether or not they want to be part of a union without coercion and intimidation by management, by signing union authorization cards (card check neutrality); and 5) a contract term that does not allow employers to isolate San Francisco workers from hotel workers elsewhere in North America.

Just before the Labor Day action, the first of the 14 hotels broke ranks—the St. Francis—and agreed to the key demand of a contract which expires in 2006. They were taken off the boycott list. Then the Palace and Argent hotels also announced they would agree. They still remain on the list, however, in addition to the other 11 hotels which are still taking a hard line against the union.

Eight of the hotels in the MEG would have to agree in order to overturn that stand.