San Francisco, California, November 6, 2009 – The first of what may be many strikes hit San Francisco’s Class A hotels when workers launched a 3-day strike against the Grand Hyatt Union Square, one of the city’s largest and most luxurious. The contract with the workers’ union, Unite Here Local 2, expired on August 14. Since then, Local 2 has been trying to bargain a new agreement in the middle of an economic depression, in which hotels complain of reduced revenues.
<!— picture info —>
(Photo: David Bacon / Truthout)
The luxury hotel chains demand changes in eligibility for the health care plan that would eliminate coverage for many or place it economically out of reach. Hotels want them to pay $35 per month this year, $115 per month next year, and $200 per month the year after.
Aurolyn Rush, a PBX operator at the Hyatt, says, “With what we make, we can’t afford that. Many of us would have to go without healthcare entirely.”
A typical San Francisco hotel worker earns $30,000 per year, and many can’t work a full 40-hour week. The union has offered a one-year agreement that would increase costs by only 1.5 percent, but the hotels have responded that they want that low-cost structure to continue for several years more, in which their revenues and profits would rise as the depression ends. In fact, under the hotel proposal, worker payments for healthcare would increase substantially during a period in which hotel profits rebound.
<!— picture info —>
(Photo: David Bacon / Truthout)
The Hyatt was chosen as the first hotel to be struck because its owners, the Prtizker family, made an initial public offering of 38 million shares of stock today, as a result of which the family expects to receive as much as $900 million. Penny Pritzker was treasurer for the election campaign of President Barack Obama.
<!— picture info —>
(Photo: David Bacon / Truthout)
While the chain declared a loss of $36 million in the first two quarters of this year, it made between $168 million and $336 million in each of the previous five years. In addition, Hyatt shocked hotel workers nationwide in August when it fired all its housekeepers at its three Boston hotels, replacing them with workers from an outside contractor earning half their wages. The Hyatt strike lasted for three days, after which workers returned to work. Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian was paid $6.7 million in 2008. The average San Francisco hotel worker earns about $30,000 per year.
<!— picture info —>
(Photo: David Bacon / Truthout)
For more articles and images about hotel workers, see:
https://dbacon.igc.org/Work/work.htm
https://dbacon.igc.org/Unions/unions.htm
See also “Illegal People – How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants” (Beacon Press, 2008). Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008.
See also the photo documentary on indigenous migration to the US, “Communities Without Borders” (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006).
See also “The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border” (University of California, 2004).
David Bacon, Photographs and Stories.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy