[URBANTH-L]Fwd: SF Hilton settles!

[Mieka Brand]

I think the forwarded message didn't go through the first time I sent
this -- here is a text version of the announcement and article.  FYI
(originally sent by Christopher Niedt to the Critical Geography list)



Hi everyone,

There's great news from San Francisco, where UNITE-HERE Local 2 just
settled with the Multi-Employer Group that includes the SF Hilton!  The
contract is a good one that includes card-check neutrality for new
hotels,
unprecedented raises, and 2 years of back pay at the new wage rates.

A report by David Bacon follows below.

Best,
Chris Niedt


> SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 9/13/06 - San Francisco hotel workers announce
that
their union, UNITE HERE Local 2, has reached agreement on a new contract
with the city's leading hotels.  UNITE HERE Local 2
> negotiated for over two years with thirteen San Francisco Class A
hotels
in the Multi Employer Group, and went without a contract during that
time.  The union acheived its major goals, including card-check
neutrality to make it easier for workers in non-union hotels in San
Francisco and San Mateo Counties to join the union. Workers won
> substantial wage and benefit increases, and defeated an attempt to
make
them accept a two-tier arrangement giving new workers a lower wage and
benefit standard.  The union accepted no concessions.
> Negotiations are part of a national campaign, Hotel Workers Rising, in
which hotel unions in many cities are negotiating new contracts this
year.  San Francisco workers took a strike vote in August, along with
workers in Hawaii, Chicago, Toronto and Monterey. When the Local 2
contract expired two years ago, the union wanted a new agreement that
would expire this year, so that it would be able to negotiate at the
same time other hotel locals were bargaining in other cities.  The MEG
refused, and Local 2 struck four hotels for two weeks.  The MEG then
locked workers out of all its hotels for nine weeks.  Employers were
finally forced to lift the lockout, with the intervention of Mayor Gavin
Newsom, but the union had to continue to work without a contract until
the completion of the new agreement. Local 2's bargaining
> committee recommended the contract unanimously, and the membership is
expected to ratify it by a large majority. Contracts have also expired
in over thirty other SF hotels, covering over 5000 workers, and
> negotiations there are continuing.  The union says it will not accept
a
lower standard in those hotels.
>


------------------------------
Mieka Brand
Visiting Assistant Professor
The College of Wooster
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
mbrand at wooster.edu