[URBANTH-L]UNITE HERE Statement

[Robert T. O'Brien]

Please see the forwarded message below. Neal Kwatra form 
UNITE HERE has emailed this message to Alan Goodman and 
several others who have been working with the union.

Best,

R

---- Original message ----
>Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 19:40:30 -0400
>From: "Neal Kwatra" <nkwatra at hereunion.org>  
>Subject: Statement  
>To: agoodman at hampshire.edu, Paulect69 at aol.com, 
robrien at temple.edu, epd2 at psu.edu, kathryn.clancy at yale.edu, 
borofsky at hpu.edu
>Cc: nkwatra at hereunion.org, nkwatra at igc.org
>
>I am Neal Kwatra, a coordinator in the Strategic Affairs 
>Department with UNITE HERE, the Union that represents the 
>locked out workers in San Francisco.
>
>Leaders and members of the AAA have asked me to address 
>some of the issues your organization has been debating 
>over the last week.
>
>We sincerely appreciate the AAA for not crossing the 
>picket line and moving the convention out of San 
>Francisco, however, we would have preferred a different 
>outcome than the contract swap with Hilton in Atlanta. 
>
>Thank you for all your hard work on this issue, our 
>members in San Francisco and throughout the country truly 
>appreciate your support and solidarity. The best way to 
>support our locked out members in this struggle and 
>long-term, is to work with us and other organizations on a 
>long-term program to level the playing field between 
>multinational hotel corporations and their workers.
>
>The link below will give you an opportunity to better 
>understand the issues our members are so courageously 
>fighting for in San Francisco.
>
>http://www.unitehere2.org/issues.html
>
>I think it is important to provide you with some of the 
>history of our efforts to arrive at a solution that would 
>work for the AAA, its members and for the thousands of 
>locked out hotel workers on the streets in San Francisco, 
>who are without livelihood for the duration of the 
>lockout.
>
>Our Union initially reached out to the AAA on August 30. 
>We offered to work with your organization on alternative 
>locations that would be of minimal disruption (San Jose). 
> Because we have experience working with other groups, in 
>the context of labor disputes, we offered to work with 
>your staff on the liability issues as well.  We offered to 
>work in partnership to come up with a mutually beneficial 
>situation for the AAA and our members in San Francisco. 
>Unfortunately, we were never able to advance the 
>conversation with your staff.
>
>The first time anyone in the leadership or staff of the 
>AAA reached out to our Union to discuss this situation was 
>early last week when I received a call from 
>President-elect Alan Goodman.  He was very clear that his 
>goal was to work with UNITE HERE in a constructive fashion 
>to support our locked out members in SF, while 
>simultaneously finding a viable solution for the AAA.
>
>Despite good-faith efforts on his part to explore mutually 
>beneficial options like San Jose, another school of 
>thought prevailed. Alan Goodman has been a helpful partner 
>in our collective efforts to support the locked out 
>workers in SF and I look forward to working with him and 
>others within the AAA as the struggle for hotel worker 
>justice continues.
>
>The AAA has an enormous amount of power in its 
>relationships with corporations like Hilton. For the 
>Hiltons and Marriotts of the world, what matters most is 
>maintaining the AAA as a long-term client; they want your 
>business year-after-year. They are too smart and savvy to 
>risk severing a relationship with a key customer like the 
>AAA over a situation like the one in San Francisco. In the 
>big picture, $1.2 million is not what is important to 
>them; a very long and very profitable relationship with 
>the AAA and other academic organizations is more important 
>to them in the long run than $1.2 million in the short 
>term.  Additionally, in a competitive marketplace they 
>cannot afford a reputation as a company that sues its 
>customers.  
>
>For an organization whose scholarship and research often 
>focuses on power relationships, your organization made a 
>decision, in my opinion, that did not take into account 
>the power-you have as an organization-in your relationship 
>with Hilton. 
>
>Having said that, we are especially grateful to the AAA 
>members, leaders and activists who galvanized support 
>among the membership and who lead the effort to convince 
>the AAA's leadership that crossing a picket line in SF was 
>completely antithetical to everything your organization 
>stands for. 
>
>Many people have asked what the AAA can do moving forward 
>to support the hotel workers struggle in SF and around the 
>country.  Given your unique relationship with the Hilton 
>Corporation, concrete steps the AAA can take that would 
>have a dramatic impact on the struggle of hotel workers in 
>this country include:
>
>·	ensuring that your staff has strong "force majeure" 
>language in your hotel contracts, to address labor 
>disputes.  You should never have to decide between the 
>risk of litigation and crossing boycott or picket lines. 
>We can work with the AAA on suggested ?force majeure? 
>contract language.
>
>·	a wholesale reexamination of your relationship with 
>Hilton Hotels. In order for there to be some lasting 
>impact of your move out of San Francisco, Hilton needs to 
>understand that a swap to Atlanta is not where the issue 
>ends. It is my understanding that you are scheduled to be 
>back at the San Francisco Hilton in 2006 and 2008, but you 
>are not contractually obligated beyond that.  We have very 
>concrete ideas about what you can do with Hilton to have a 
>broader impact on the current and long term struggle for 
>justice for workers in the hotel industry and we would 
>welcome the opportunity to work with all of you on those 
>ideas.
>
>
>We are working with many other academic organizations 
>(Sociologists, Geographers, American Studies and others) 
>and progressive groups (women's, civil rights, immigrant 
>rights, religious) on a coordinated program to deal with 
>the hotel industry. Your organization and others like it 
>represent hundreds of millions of dollars in economic 
>activity for these hotel corporations. We need to work 
>together as a cohesive, progressive movement to affect 
>real change in the relationship between these corporations 
>and workers in the hotel industry.
>
>Si Se Puede!
>
>FYI- for those attending the meeting in Atlanta, the Hyatt 
>Regency is currently our only union-hotel in Atlanta.  
>
>Hyatt Regency Atlanta
>265 Peachtree Street North East
>Atlanta, GA 30303
>Phone: (404) 577-1234
>
>For those of you who want to make a contribution to our 
>locked out members in San Francisco, here is the 
>information:
>
>Local 2 Solidarity Fund
>UNITE HERE! Local 2
>209 Golden Gate Avenue
>San Francisco, CA 94102 
>
>
>In Solidarity,
>Neal Kwatra
>Strategic Affairs Department
>UNITE HERE
>
>
>  
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 

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