11/20 SF Rally& Picket For Hotel Workers

Initiated By Million Worker March Committee
Co-sponsored by
SF Labor Council
UNITE-HERE Local 2
Executive Board ILWU Local 10


UNION SQUARE – NOVEMBER 20 - 11:00 A.M.
ALL OUT IN SUPPORT OF THE HOTEL WORKERS


Four thousand San Francisco hotel workers have been locked out for more than a month. Hotel workers in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. are fighting as well for a contract with a common expiration date. These are workers who do the most difficult jobs from room cleaners to cooks to front desk staff.
Many are immigrant workers who work two jobs to survive and provide for their families. They are fighting to protect their health care, pensions, wages and the right to contracts that expire at the same time as do other hotel contracts around the country so the bosses cannot fragment the struggle for decent working conditions.
Most of these workers are Latino, Asian and African-American. The wages they receive are designed to keep them in permanent poverty. They need the support of workers across America. Let there be no mistake about it. By targeting the most vulnerable of our workers, the hotel owners are setting the stage for a generalized assault upon for the healthcare benefits of all workers in the United States, union and non-union. Millions of other workers are threatened with contracts that deprive them of their health care – from airline to grocery workers.
This is the opening note of a corporate offensive. The Hotel owners, representing Hilton, Hyatt, Holiday Inn and Sheraton and the other major chains, have flown in hundreds of strikebreakers from around the country to smash the San Francisco hotel workers and their union. It is a defining struggle that will set the stage for broader attacks on wages, pensions, full time work and the very existence of health coverage for working Americans.
The global multi-nationals, that own the major hotels and other industries, make profits in the billions, but 61%of U.S. corporations 71% of corporations that have offices overseas pay no taxes at all while their profits soar.
The bosses are demanding that hotel workers pay the cost of health care. That cost will escalate year by year. They seek to prevent workers from having a unified expiration date on contracts precisely to prevent workers from carrying out a united defense of their interests and by fragmenting workers to undermine the union.
The denial to hotel workers of the right to determine when their contracts expire is not merely an expression of the arrogance of the tax-dodging billionaires who own the hotel industry. It is a thinly disguised form of union busting and strike breaking.
This is why the hotel owners have locked out the workers as they seek to impose a flood of scab workers. The hotel owners are waging a class war on behalf of corporate and banking America and their initial target of opportunity is the most exploited sector of the work force.
These are the stakes. The Million Worker March Organizing Committee and the Million Worker Movement (contact http://www.millionworkermarch.org) call upon workers to forge their own agenda and to unite in exposing and resisting the national epidemic of corporate and banking union busting and the all out attacks on our healthcare, wages, pensions, social services and the vital infrastructure of our society.
We are under siege. We call on workers everywhere to unite and to support the locked-out hotel workers on their picket lines. Their fight is our fight. As the motto of the International Longshore and Warehouse Workers proclaims: "An Injury to One Is An Injury to All."
The defense of the locked-out hotel workers today is a fight to alert and mobilize workers m America who face give-back contracts that jeopardize decent healthcare. We call upon rank and file workers to urge your union to stand with our brothers and sisters under siege: adopt a hotel and join in informational picketing.
On November 20, 2004 at 11:00 a.m. there will be a "Stand By The Hotel Workers and Their Pickets" rally in Union Square in San Francisco followed by a March to join the pickets at key hotels.

We encourage union supporters of the hotel workers to organize a telephone campaign flooding hotel chain owners with calls demanding that the bosses pay for healthcare benefits and open the books on their billion dollar profits.
Keep the struggle alive: defend the right of hotel workers to healthcare, decent wages and full benefits.
In San Francisco the hotels that have locked out workers include:
Crown Plaza, San Francisco Hilton, Grand Hyatt, Holiday Inn/Civic Center Holiday Inn/Express @ Wharf, Holiday Inn/Fisherman’s Wharf, Hyatt Regency, OMNI, Palace Hotel, St. Francis Hotel, Mark Hopkins.

(866)655-4669 Holiday Inns
(888)625-4988 Starwood-St. Francis
(800)228-3360 Hyatt Hotels
(800)445-8667 HILTON Hotels
(800) 819-5053 Four Seasons
(800) 465-4329 Intercontinental Hotels-Mark Hopkins
(800)843-6664 Omni Hotels

For More Information Visit
http://www.millionworkermarch.org
(415)771-2028
http://www.unitehere.org
UFCW Grocery Workers will also be having a mobiilzation at supermarkets in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland and San Jose on November 19th.
For further information go to http://www.bayareacoaliton.org