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Union isolates locked-out San Francisco hotel workers
Hotel workers at 14 San Francisco luxury hotels are in the sixth week of a lockout that began on October 1. The action by the hotels was in response to a strike launched September 29 by1,400 members of Local 2 of the Union of Needle Trades Industrial and Textile Employees-Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (UNITE HERE) against the Hilton, Argent, Mark Hopkins and Crowne Plaza hotels.
The San Francisco Multiple Employers Group (SFMEG), representing the major hotels in the city, locked out its employees at the four hotels that were struck plus an additional 2,900 workers at ten other hotels. Throughout the strike and lockout, the hotels have continued to operate with strikebreakers.
The actions of the union leadership are a stark demonstration of the bureaucracy’s cowardice and inability to defend, much less advance, the interests of the membership. The union limited the initial strike to two weeks. When the hotels retaliated with a general lockout, the union not only refused to expand the strike, it meekly ordered striking workers back to work at the end of the two-week period.
The hotels, predictably, refused to take the striking workers back, and UNITE HERE responded by doing nothing. Since then, it has worked to isolate and demoralize the workers.
The union knew months in advance that a strike and lockout were likely, but the leadership failed to build up an adequate strike fund, limiting strike pay to the paltry sum of $200 a week for 20 hours of picketing. No substantial sums have been forthcoming from the AFL-CIO, and no mass appeals have been made to workers in other industries to support the hotel workers.
....
The union bureaucracy has been a willing participant in the speed-up of San Francisco’s hotel workers. Local 2 officials have joined the hotel industry in the so-called San Francisco Hotels Partnership, which develops ways of increasing worker productivity and reducing labor turnover by resolving labor management conflicts.
The union’s isolation of the hotel workers, and its support for the Democratic establishment that continues to subsidize the hotels, are not accidental mistakes. They point to a deliberate policy of softening up hotel workers and demoralizing them in preparation for a contract with massive givebacks in health benefits, a token wage increase, and new attacks on working conditions.
San Francisco’s hotel workers should draw the lessons of the recent supermarket strike in Southern California, in which grocery employees were left standing on the picket lines for months, their struggle isolated by the union bureaucracy, only to be sent back to work under a contract that gutted their health benefits.
Significant support for the UNITE HERE membership exists in San Francisco. Workers and students from across the Bay Area have joined picket lines and attended labor rallies in support of the hotel workers. However, a betrayal and defeat can be averted only by breaking with the union bureaucracy and waging a struggle for the industrial mobilization of the working class throughout the Bay Area to halt the union-busting, combined with the fight for a new political strategy—a break from the Democrats and the building of an independent party of the working class based on socialist policies.
Read More
http://wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/hotl-n20.shtml
The actions of the union leadership are a stark demonstration of the bureaucracy’s cowardice and inability to defend, much less advance, the interests of the membership. The union limited the initial strike to two weeks. When the hotels retaliated with a general lockout, the union not only refused to expand the strike, it meekly ordered striking workers back to work at the end of the two-week period.
The hotels, predictably, refused to take the striking workers back, and UNITE HERE responded by doing nothing. Since then, it has worked to isolate and demoralize the workers.
The union knew months in advance that a strike and lockout were likely, but the leadership failed to build up an adequate strike fund, limiting strike pay to the paltry sum of $200 a week for 20 hours of picketing. No substantial sums have been forthcoming from the AFL-CIO, and no mass appeals have been made to workers in other industries to support the hotel workers.
....
The union bureaucracy has been a willing participant in the speed-up of San Francisco’s hotel workers. Local 2 officials have joined the hotel industry in the so-called San Francisco Hotels Partnership, which develops ways of increasing worker productivity and reducing labor turnover by resolving labor management conflicts.
The union’s isolation of the hotel workers, and its support for the Democratic establishment that continues to subsidize the hotels, are not accidental mistakes. They point to a deliberate policy of softening up hotel workers and demoralizing them in preparation for a contract with massive givebacks in health benefits, a token wage increase, and new attacks on working conditions.
San Francisco’s hotel workers should draw the lessons of the recent supermarket strike in Southern California, in which grocery employees were left standing on the picket lines for months, their struggle isolated by the union bureaucracy, only to be sent back to work under a contract that gutted their health benefits.
Significant support for the UNITE HERE membership exists in San Francisco. Workers and students from across the Bay Area have joined picket lines and attended labor rallies in support of the hotel workers. However, a betrayal and defeat can be averted only by breaking with the union bureaucracy and waging a struggle for the industrial mobilization of the working class throughout the Bay Area to halt the union-busting, combined with the fight for a new political strategy—a break from the Democrats and the building of an independent party of the working class based on socialist policies.
Read More
http://wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/hotl-n20.shtml
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Hotel workers are now receiving unemployment.
The unemployment benefits for such low paid workers is not much and not enough to sustain them, as well as their families, which many of them have.
The World Socialist's article is excellent as usual, but it did not fully describe Nazi Newsom, the illegal election-frauding Democrat "mayor" who one year ago, committed massive election fraud paid for by his anti-rent control, pro-landlord supporters to "defeat" pro-rent control, pro-tenant Green Party supervisor Matt Gonzalez in the mayor's race. This was facilitated by election fraud Democrat Arntz, the chief of the Election Department, who refused to implement the law for instant runoff voting last year, forcing the IRV people to obtain a court order to make him do it this year. In a December runoff, not only do we pay a fortune for this election, but it is easier to commit election fraud, which Newsom did.
Nazi Newsom's campaign was openly aided by the anti-gay marriage womanizer, Jesse Jackson, and the war criminal former president Bill Clinton, who came here at the last minute to promote their landlord's lackey, millionaire Gavin Newsom.
Nazi Newsom's election fraud team included the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, Housing Authority, Nation of Islam, Glide Church, TURF, SLUG, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the San Francisco Police Department, and the entire real estate industry.
The Democratic Party's election fraud is described more fully at:
http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium
and
http://www.brasscheck.com/jonestown
The World Socialist's article is excellent as usual, but it did not fully describe Nazi Newsom, the illegal election-frauding Democrat "mayor" who one year ago, committed massive election fraud paid for by his anti-rent control, pro-landlord supporters to "defeat" pro-rent control, pro-tenant Green Party supervisor Matt Gonzalez in the mayor's race. This was facilitated by election fraud Democrat Arntz, the chief of the Election Department, who refused to implement the law for instant runoff voting last year, forcing the IRV people to obtain a court order to make him do it this year. In a December runoff, not only do we pay a fortune for this election, but it is easier to commit election fraud, which Newsom did.
Nazi Newsom's campaign was openly aided by the anti-gay marriage womanizer, Jesse Jackson, and the war criminal former president Bill Clinton, who came here at the last minute to promote their landlord's lackey, millionaire Gavin Newsom.
Nazi Newsom's election fraud team included the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, Housing Authority, Nation of Islam, Glide Church, TURF, SLUG, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the San Francisco Police Department, and the entire real estate industry.
The Democratic Party's election fraud is described more fully at:
http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium
and
http://www.brasscheck.com/jonestown
For more information:
http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium
Newsom is a left-wing liberal by national standards. You're not going to get better than him, dear. I would suggest that you find a way to deal with reality rather than "demanding' crap that no one is going to give you. Please.
Yeah, that's why Gonzalez almost won the election...maybe if you're weren't so *nasty* all the time, people would actually talk with you. As it is, you're little more than an annoying troller. Please consider articulating what you think/feel with the brain you obviously have.
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