Calpine Workers Petition for Union Election; Documents Delivered to NLRB in San Francisco
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This is a cross-post from Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1245.
Five Calpine employees delivered authorization cards to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in San Francisco on Dec. 1, the latest step in a campaign to gain union representation for workers at Calpine’s power plants in Northern California.
The Calpine employees were joined by about 50 supporters for a brief rally in front of the NLRB on San Francisco’s Market Street. Several Bay Area labor leaders offered words of encouragement to the Calpine organizers.
“We’re not asking for anything in particular. We’re not asking for better wages, better benefits,” said Mike Farmer, a long-time Calpine employee with decades of service in the industry. “What we want is a voice and some representation. We’re asking Calpine to allow us to have a free and fair election.”
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.
Workers Strike San Francisco’s Grand Hyatt Hotel
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| San Francisco hotel workers rallied in September for a fair contract. |
Hotel workers began a three-day strike this morning at the Grand Hyatt Union Square in San Francisco. The strike comes two weeks after members of UNITE HERE Local 2 voted by a 92 percent to 8 percent margin to authorize strikes at any of the 31 upscale hotels in San Francisco.
Local 2′s contracts with the luxury hotels expired in June. Since then, the union has been trying to negotiate new agreements. But despite earning record profits over the past five years, the hotels are using the recession as an excuse to demand changes in eligibility for the employees’ health care plan that would eliminate coverage or put it out of reach for many workers.
“This is a limited strike,” said Local 2 President Mike Casey.
It’s intended to send a clear signal to this corporation that they cannot use a temporary downturn to permanently drive down workers’ living standards.
While demanding workers take concessions, the Pritzker family, which owns the Grand Hyatt, is conducting an initial public stock offering today expected to raise close to $1 billion.
Says Aurolyn Rush, a 13-year telephone operator at the Grand Hyatt:
Hyatt’s cashing out almost a billion dollars for its owners, but at the same time they’re pushing to make health care unaffordable for me and my family? That is unforgivable, and we’re not going to stand for it.
