David Bacon, San Francisco
Sometimes the fate of a single battle foretells the outcome of a war, long before it's over. The end of the San Francisco hotel lockout promises to be this kind of watershed moment.
On November 20, minutes before San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom strode into his office, and announced the end of the five-week lockout before a bank of television cameras, he went down the hall to pay respects to the workers. As he walked through the door, dozens of room cleaners, waiters, bartenders and floor sweepers rose to their feet and gave him a standing ovation. It was the culmination of one of the most remarkable turnabouts in the political history of a city known for unconventional politics.
The mayor, after all, was the candidate of the workers' enemies. For years leading to his election, the city's hotels had bankrolled Newsom's political initiatives. When Newsom finally ran for mayor, downtown businesses, including hotels, were his primary supporters. At the time, the hotel union was one of the few that outspokenly campaigned for his opponent, Green candidate Matt Gonzalez.
But local 2 of UNITE-HERE (an amalgamation of textile, including laundry, and hotel workers' unions) has waged a struggle that changed the landscape.
By September 6, the union was locked in fractious negotiations with the 14 hotels of the Multi Employer Group. This group represents hotel operators, including multibillion-dollar corporations like Hilton, Intercontinental, Starwood and Hyatt. The actual hotels themselves are owned by large investment groups and pension funds.
While the hotel operators were proposing tiny wage increases, and big hikes in medical insurance payments of up to $273 a month, the key issue was the duration of the contract itself. Local 2 proposed that a new agreement expire in 2006, when similar contracts with the same corporations expire in other cities around the country, from New York to Chicago to Honolulu. By lining up the expiration dates, the union hoped to form a common front of workers in major urban hotel markets, who could act together to win a new standard of living that individual local unions are too weak to gain alone.
At the same time, another union bargaining proposal sought to unify its members and consolidate community support. Existing protections for immigrants would be combined with a new proposal to increase the diversity of the hotel work force, particularly by hiring African-American workers.
In September, the union launched a limited two-week strike against four hotels. The operators responded by locking the workers out of the other 10 hotels in the group, and then announced they'd extend the lockout beyond the strike's end, so long as workers continued to demand the 2006 expiration date.
Perhaps thinking that workers would be reluctant to sacrifice wages simply for an expiration date, hotels miscalculated again.
Then the union turned the lockout into a weapon against the operators. The 4300 locked-out labourers mounted large boisterous picket lines. Megaphones blasted their chants into the streets, and up into the hotel rooms, from early morning until after midnight. Union members ate on the lines, often bringing their children with them. Picketers were a polyglot reflection of the city's diversity, with all its colours and racial groups, speaking its bewildering variety of languages. Some conventions pulled out of picketed hotels, while guests at others complained, or refused to cross the lines. When operators brought in strikebreakers from other cities, the union extended its picketlines to Chicago, Honolulu and Monterey, provoking one-day shutdowns that previewed what coordinated bargaining in 2006 might accomplish.
Finally, the union turned to the city itself, holding a hearing in which hundreds of workers overflowed the chambers and City Hall. The mayor, hitherto quiet about the dispute, was pushed into action. Here the hotel operators made their most disastrous miscalculation. Newsom asked them to end the lockout, while he tried to make progress in negotiations. The hotels turned him down flat. Matt Adams, head of the Multi Employer Group, wondered aloud in the San Francisco Chronicle why the candidate whose campaign they'd financed was not taking their side without question.
Newsom went to the picket lines, and announced he was pulling city business from the hotels. As complaints mounted about picket-line noise, Newsom pulled the police away, pointing out that the operators could end the ruckus any time they liked.
Finally, the union and its allies, now including the mayor, drove a wedge between the hotel operators, and the owners who gained nothing from the lockout's continuation. After five weeks, the operators finally let the workers return to their jobs, with no agreement on the contract expiration date.
The contract remains unresolved. The union, while it agreed not to strike for 60 days, announced it would continue the rest of its effective pressure campaign. The operators still have deep reserves, and the hotels will be able to function unhindered through their busiest season. But the grand strategy to stop the union's march towards greater bargaining leverage has unravelled.
From Green Left Weekly, December 1, 2004.
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