[URBANTH-L]Philippe Bourgois on boycotting the Hilton

[Robert T. O'Brien]

FYI

---- Original message ----
>Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2004 15:21:32 -0700
>From: Philippe Bourgois <bourgoi at itsa.ucsf.edu>  
>Subject: posting statements on boycotting the Hilton  
>To: robrien at temple.edu
>
>
>   Dear Anthropologists,
>
>           Please do not go to Atlanta for the sake of
>   the workers locked out of the Hilton Hotel in San
>   Francisco and for the sake of hotel service workers
>   throughout the country.  The Hilton Hotel in San
>   Francisco has locked its workers out for asking for
>   basic necessities that are common sense in the rest
>   of the industrialized world and should be considered
>   a basic human right:  decent minimum wages and
>   health benefits... (for full-time employees!)  The
>   conference in Atlanta is at a non-union Hilton
>   Hotel.  All sections of the American Anthropological
>   Association should cancel their sessions in
>   Atlanta.  The Hilton Hotel and the Hilton Company
>   will benefit financially and symbolically by having
>   anthropologists attend their hotel in Atlanta.
>             By patronizing any Hilton Hotel while its
>   workers are locked out in San Francisco (or anywhere
>   else in the world or the country) we would be
>   behaving exactly like United Fruit Company
>   executives in Central America and multinational
>   executives throughout the world who break the backs
>   of unions by simply switching production to
>   non-union plantations/sweatshops in neighboring
>   countries when one of its plantations/sweatshops
>   tries to unionize.  That is unconscionably abusive
>   and is much more important than any of our
>   anthropology-meeting-related concerns.  We should
>   have the decency and humility to realize that
>   whatever we have to say at our academic meetings can
>   wait for another year or six months for the sake of
>   hotel workers.  Service workers have a chance of
>   winning this fight for their rights because hotels,
>   unlike plantations and sweatshops, have to stay
>   put.  The service workers union will lose if
>   organizations like the AAA move around the country
>   at the  will of the Company to whichever city has
>   the cheapest wage and most abusive working
>   conditions.  This is not a complicated issue.  It
>   should be easy for anthropologists with a global
>   perspective to understand the stakes.
>
>   Philippe Bourgois
>   Professor
>   Department of Anthropology, History and Social
>   Medicine
>   University of California, San Francisco
>   Box 0850
>   3333 California Street          [@ Walnut  street]
>   Suite 485
>   San Francisco CA 94143-0850
>   (For express delivery use zip code 94118)
>   Tel 415 502-8400
>   Fax 415 374-7160
>   
http://www.dahsm.medschool.ucsf.edu/faculty/bios/bourgois_phil
ippe.aspx
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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