Super Solidarity over Super Bowl Weekend
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Over the weekend, all eyes were on the Super Bowl in Indianapolis, where tens of thousands traveled to see the event and hundreds of thousands more watched it on television. But while the spotlight was on the game, workers across the city took to the streets to protest the outrages happening to working people.
In one such event, we rallied at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Indianapolis, where hardworking hotel housekeepers are fighting to keep their jobs and boost their poverty-level pay at a hotel where rates can be more than $1,000 a night for a Super Bowl week room. Twenty longtime hotel workers may be out of jobs in a few days when the hotel ends a subcontract with Hospitality Staffing Solutions.
The hotel workers are not in this fight alone. In the midst of what is undoubtedly the busiest few days for football players, DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), and NFL players joined Hyatt housekeepers at the rally to demand Hyatt end its abuse of subcontracted workers and hire outsourced workers directly. Smith said NFL players would continue a year-old boycott of Hyatt over its treatment of workers and told the crowd:
I love people who stand together to fight for what’s right.
Just blocks from the Super Bowl, these football players, together with construction workers, office staff and steelworkers, stood side by side with hotel housekeepers, joined in common cause by the struggles that unite all working people—all of the 99 percent in this country who are fighting against corporate greed and challenging politicians who seek to take away our rights as citizens of this great country. Read the rest of this entry »
Hotel Workers Gain Recognition of Rights in Palestine
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This is a cross-post from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.
Palestinian hotel workers ended 2010 with a major victory, gaining important rights and protections after more than a year of negotiations with the Arab Hotel Association.
Following a 16-month campaign to help workers choose a union, the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) and the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union (HRWU) reached an agreement with hotel owners that will improve working conditions and better guarantee workers’ rights under existing labor law. The agreement, which was signed late last month, was extended to cover 65 hotels in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Solidarity Center supported the initial hotel organizing campaign.
“The agreement elevates and strengthens the workers’ spirits and creates optimism about improving working conditions,” said Ahmad Hasasneh, who helped workers join a union in Ramallah and Bethlehem.
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.
Hotel Workers Add 3 Chicago Hyatts to Boycott List
Ross Hyman, a research analyst for the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Research, shares this info.
Joined by clergy and other community supporters, Hyatt hotel workers gathered outside Hyatt headquarters in Chicago yesterday to announce a boycott of the Hyatt Regency Chicago, the Park Hyatt Chicago and the Hyatt Regency O’Hare hotels. Hyatt workers, members of UNITEHERE!, have been working without a contract for nearly a year as Hyatt management continues in its insistence on cutting employee health care. Hotel workers are now boycotting 10 Hyatt hotels across the nation.
Gabriel Carasquillo, a server at the Park Hyatt, told the crowd:
I truly believe that my health should not be a point of negotiation.
Reform Rabbis Support Hyatt Workers
Ross Hyman, a research analyst for the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Research, shares this info.
The world’s largest group of Jewish clergy, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), is calling on the owners and leadership of Hyatt Hotels to commit to the Jewish and universal obligations to treat workers fairly and to recognize the value of their labor. The clergy are asking “all Jewish institutions and individuals to support Hyatt workers in their disputes.”
Executive Council Focuses on Jobs, Election, Workers’ Rights
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In the midst of the worst jobs crisis since the Depression, the AFL-CIO Executive Council laid out a road map for how the Obama administration and Congress can fundamentally revamp the nation’s economy so that it puts workers first. President Barack Obama, who addressed the Council on Aug. 4, seemed to get it when he said that making things in America is at the heart of the economic recovery. The Council also laid out plans for the critical fall elections.
In a series of statements, Council members reaffirmed the need for immediate adoption of the AFL-CIO’s five point plan to create new jobs and warned that reducing the deficit must come after we create more revenue-producing jobs. You can check out all the new Executive Council statements here.
AFL-CIO Union Summer: ‘This Internship Has Changed Me’
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The AFL-CIO’s Union Summer for Jobs 2010, a 10-week educational internship in which participants are introduced to the labor movement, goes well beyond the average internship.
Ask Anthony Scorzo. His internship has included learning about UCubed, a social network for unemployed workers launched earlier this year by the Machinists (IAM). Scorzo can relate to the problems faced by unemployed workers. He’s a laid-off communications electrician and Electrical Workers (IBEW) member, so he knows what they’re going through.
We’re canvassing at unemployment offices, holding rallies outside the offices of politicians who voted against the jobs bill, starting potlucks in neighborhoods and community centers. There’s a lot of people out of work. They need benefits now. I’m one of them.
Netroots Nation Demands Westin Bargain Fairly With Workers
Big shout out to Netroots Nation, the group that sponsors a yearly conference for progressive bloggers and online activists. Organizers of the annual event, which is slated for Providence, R.I., in 2011, are letting the Westin Providence hotel know that unless management comes to an agreement with workers there, Netroots Nation will not work with the hotel in hosting the more than 2,000 participants who take part. That would mean a more than $2 million loss for the city, because without the Westin, Netroots Nation would move to another city for sufficient accommodations.
Some 200 hotel workers at the Westin, members of UNITEHERE! Local 217, have been picketing daily in front of the hotel after its owners, the Procaccianti Group, ended contract negotiations and unilaterally imposed a 20-percent pay cut and an increase in employees’ health insurance costs March 14.
UNITEHERE! Calls for Boycott of 7 Hotels
Fed up with their employer paying off its high debt on the backs of workers, employees of Columbia Sussex Corp. rallied around the country this week and called on customers to boycott seven hotels owned by the company.
In the past few years, workers represented by UNITEHERE! at four hotels owned by Columbia Sussex have been laid off, seen their benefits reduced and their pay frozen and been forced to pay higher health care premiums as the company scrambles to pay off more than $1 billion in debt in securities it borrowed to buy 14 hotels in 2005.
Trumka: To Solve Job Crisis ‘We Must Create Different Kind of Economy’
After meeting with several unemployed San Diego workers this morning, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka spoke at a rally of workers, union, community and faith leaders calling for creation of a local jobs program.
What I’ve seen here this morning as I sat with some of the hard-working people of this great city—people who through no fault of their own are without jobs—is another grim reminder of the ever-present struggles of working families in this city, this state, this country.
He said the labor movement and the nation’s leaders must “respond as never before to create a different kind of economy.” Click here to read his entire speech.
