Hotel housekeepers and hospitality workers, together with supporters from other unions, marched through downtown San Francisco, and staged a demonstration in the entrance of the Palace Hotel. 68 people were arrested in an act of civil disobedience. The hotel union, UNITEHERE Local 2, has been negotiating for over two years with thirteen San Francisco Class A hotels, and has gone without a contract during that time. Negotiations are now part of a national campaign, Hotel Workers Rising, which seeks major increases in wages and benefits for hotel workers. Workers took a strike vote a week earlier. Strike votes have also been taken in Monterey, CA, Hawaii, Chicago and Toronto. Contract demands include family health care, limits on workloads that cause increaesd injuries, living wages, adequate pensions, job security when a hotel is sold to a new owner, and guarantees for the rights of workers at non-union hotels to join the union. In 2004 Local 2 struck four San Francisco hotels, and were then locked out by the other Multi Employer Group hotels for nine weeks.
Apartheid Archipelago or Paradise: The Labor Movement in Hawaii
On this episode we talk again with historian Gerald Horne about his new book Fighting in Paradise, a study of the role of the labor movement and the Communist Party in Hawaii in the mid-20th century. This is the first of a two part interview.
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