[URBANTH-L]Hotels Attack Workers Health

[Robert T. O'Brien]

Please see the following from UNITE HERE Local 2's webpage. 
The situation in San Fran is worsening, as locked out workers 
struggle to get access to a fund to keep thier health 
coverage.

To donate to Local 2 Solidarity Fund, go to 
<http://www.unitehere2.org/contribute.html>

Hotels Attack Workers Health 

As they continued barring their doors for a sixth week, hotel 
corporations continued their attack on workers and their 
families. Even while management was keeping employees out on 
the streets, they blocked the union's effort to extend health 
coverage for locked-out workers. The union had proposed on 
Monday to use a $4 million surplus from its health fund to 
continue benefits past December 1st -- when workers who have 
been kept from their jobs are scheduled to run out of health 
insurance. Management representatives, however, blocked this 
move at the trust fund's board.

Adding insult to injury, the hotel companies returned to the 
bargaining table Wednesday with a proposal to stop making all 
payments for workers' health benefits until $9 million is 
drained from the fund's reserves. This shameful move -- 
coming a week after major hotel corporations announced huge 
profit increases -- highlighted management's ongoing efforts 
to hold workers hostage over deep contract concessions. For 
more information, click here: 
<http://www.unitehere2.org/FactSheets/hw.report.20041111.pdf>.
 
Elsewhere, hotel workers around the country demonstrated 
their mounting anger at the corporations' behaviour in San 
Francisco. In Monterey, Hyatt Regency workers stayed off the 
job while Local 2 members set up a day-long picket line. 
Hotel workers in Seattle and Baltimore joined protests and 
engaged in non-violent civil disobedience against the 
companies. 


****************************************
Robert T. O'Brien 
AAAUnite Ad Hoc Committee
http://AAAUnite.blogspot.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aaaunite/
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Anthropology 
Temple University 
robrien at temple.edu 
215-803-5181 

"Don't mourn, organize!" 
-- Labor organizer Joe Hill, before being murdered in 1915 by a firing squad.