Emil McLeod
Eighty-five workers were arrested in San Francisco on October 31st during a sit-in in the middle of a busy street leading to the city’s largest hotel, the Hilton Union Square. The sit-in came as part of the continuing wave of strikes and walk-outs across the country carried out by the hotel workers of the Unite Here union since September. While some workers have reached agreements with monopoly hotels in Boston, Honolulu, and San Jose, more than 2,000 workers at the Hilton, Marriott, and Hyatt hotels remain on strike in San Francisco. More strikes at other monopoly hotels have been authorized and could begin in Seattle, San Diego, Oakland, Kauai, Boston, Honolulu, San Francisco, and San Mateo County.
The workers continue to demand a new contract that includes a reversal of staffing cuts that have remained in place since Covid and a permanent increase in wages. The monopoly hotels have kept permanent understaffing in order to lower the costs of labor and to increase the speed-up of work in their attempt to offset failing profits due to the deepening and ongoing capitalist economic crisis. Workers have also complained of overwork, which has led to workplace-related injuries and other health concerns. Despite the ongoing strikes and the union asking guests not to stay at hotels with active strikes, they have also echoed the desire of the monopoly hotels that they remain open and that the strikes impede guest traffic as little as possible.
Since the strikes began in early September, the union leadership has also been working hard to hem in the militancy of the hotel workers by imposing strike deadlines, and most recently, refusing to fight for one of the key demands of the workers, a guaranteed increase in wages. In a platitudinal statement given to monopoly media by Lizzy Tapia, president of Unite Here Local 2, she said, “Hotel workers love San Francisco and want to help our city recover. Back in August, we even offered to sacrifice guaranteed wage increases and make pay contingent on hotel profits, and we challenged the hotels to match our investment and reverse COVID-era cuts.”
While the average hospitality worker is averaging only $22.12 per hour and 25.3 hours per week, the union has declared raising the wages of workers to be of tertiary importance. Tying wages to hotel revenue would mean that workers at less profitable hotels would retain their stagnant and insufficient wages, and in many cases, could see them fall. Instead of fighting for permanent wage increases for their members across the board, a fundamental demand of the workers since the strikes began, the union is proposing a concession to the monopoly hotels to reach a quick settlement that would hang thousands of workers out to dry.
Photo: Hotel workers take to the streets outside of Marriott in San Francisco. Brook Anderson / Retrieved from Unite Here.
