Workers Strike at Two Hilton Hotels
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Hilton hotel workers are getting gored twice by their Wall Street employer. First, the private equity firm Blackstone Group, which owns the hotel chain, received a $180 million debt bailout from the taxpayers–like hotel workers. Then the company turned around and claimed it could not afford to give workers a decent salary and working conditions.
Blackstone owed about $320 million in debt to the Federal Reserve, but persuaded the Fed to accept just $142 million in payment, sticking taxpayers with the bill for the remaining $180 million.
At the same time, Blackstone is demanding an increase in the cost of emplyee family health care, a freeze on pensions, reduced staffing and increased workloads. Appalled by Blackstone’s blatant greed, workers at two of the largest Hiltons—Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu and Union Square in San Francisco—walked out to demand a fair contract and the respect they deserve.
Hotel Workers’ Faces Show Pride, Determination to Win Justice
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Photojournalist David Bacon has captured the pride and determination in the faces of hotel workers at the downtown Hilton in San Francisco who have spent the past few weeks in a dawn to dusk picket line.
The workers, who chant to guests, “Don’t check in, check out!” are demanding that the hotel’s owners negotiate a new contract with their union, UNITEHERE! Local 2.
San Francisco’s largest hotels are demanding cuts in health and retirement benefits and increased workloads.
A typical San Francisco hotel worker earns $30,000 per year.
These are their faces—all races and ages, together on the picket line.
L.A. Hotel Worker Rally Caps off Trumka’s California Jobs and Justice Tour
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At a rally last night in front of the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told a cheering crowd of about 1,000 members of UNITEHERE! Local 11 and supporters from the unions of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor:
It’s time to take on the Hyatt Hotel Corporation!
The rally, filled with hundreds of people and chanting drums so loud they echoed off high rise buildings, wrapped up his jobs and hotel worker justice swing through California.
The Hyatt is one of several national hotel chains that are using the recession as an excuse to demand cuts in health care benefits and other concessions in contract talks. In Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, some, 20,000 UNITEHERE! members since last year have been working without contracts, while contracts for hotel workers in a half dozen other cities are set to expire soon.
