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<BODY style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffffff">Statement of the Board of the American Ethnological Society on the <BR>Lockout of Local 2 UNITE/HERE at the San Francisco Hilton and the <BR>Decision of the AAA Executive Board to Relocate the 2004 Annual Meeting<BR><BR>October 24, 2004<BR><BR>The Board of the American Ethnological Society has unanimously agreed <BR>that we will not participate in a conference that crosses picket lines. <BR>We believe that expressing our solidarity with the locked-out members <BR>of Local 2 in San Francisco will have broad national implications, and <BR>will contribute to the struggle for the welfare of working people.<BR><BR>We appreciate that the AAA Executive Board has acted under <BR>extraordinary pressure as it has attempted to respond to a rapidly <BR>changing situation, that the membership of the Association is divided <BR>over many issues that have emerged very rapidly in the past week, and <BR>that every option available to the Association entails serious costs <BR>and risks both for the Association as a whole and for many members as <BR>individuals. We hope to be able to assist in efforts to reduce or <BR>eliminate the costs of these changes to our student, unemployed, and <BR>underemployed members.<BR><BR>Collectively, as a board, we have significant reservations about the <BR>Executive Board's decision to move the 2004 meeting to a non-union <BR>Hilton property in Atlanta, and we will be issuing a formal response to <BR>this decision in the near future. Individually, many of us have already <BR>decided we will not attend the meeting rescheduled and relocated at the <BR>Atlanta Hilton. However, even as we will be working to formulate an <BR>official position on what to do with the AES-sponsored sessions <BR>scheduled for the meeting, we believe it has become a matter of urgent <BR>importance that fair labor practice must now become a priority <BR>consideration for the planning of all future Association and section <BR>meetings. We hold ourselves and the Association accountable for having <BR>neglected this issue in the past.<BR> <BR>We urge our colleagues to join us in an effort to ensure that the <BR>discipline of anthropology practices the same ethical standards in its <BR>professional culture as it demands of each of its members in their <BR>individual scholarly work.<BR><BR>For ongoing information on the union demands and negotiations, updates <BR>to the AES Board's position, news from other sections, and to join an <BR>interactive discussion open to all members of the AAA, please visit the <BR>AES website at http://www.AESonline.org.<BR><BR>Matti Bunzl<BR>Virginia Dominguez<BR>Aaron Fox<BR>Kenneth George<BR>Hugh Gusterson<BR>Ralph Litzinger<BR>Catherine Lutz<BR>Ida Susser<BR>Mayfair Yang<BR><BR><BR><BR></BODY></HTML>