The indistinct music weaving through the lobby of the Hilton San Francisco in Union Square couldn’t silence the drumming and chanting outside. A steady racket alerts guests sipping Starbuck’s to the yellow “STRIKE” signs and marching workers several feet beyond the glass entrance doors.
It is the morning of Friday, April 9, the last leg of a three-day strike for 850 Hilton employees currently embroiled in a contract dispute. Workers on strike have been positioned at the hotel’s three main entrances, including its parking garage.
Their union, Unite Here! Local 2, represents 9,000 room cleaners, bartenders, dishwashers, cooks, servers and bell staff in San Francisco hotels, in addition to 3,000 hospitality industry workers in San Francisco and San Mateo counties. Leaders have been trying to negotiate a contract with hotel management at several of the City’s hotels since last August, when their previous contract expired.
At stake is the responsibility of covering the rising costs of health care, which Ian Lewis, Research Director for Local 2, says are rising 10 percent each year.
“The hotels are seeking to make workers cover cost increases,” says Lewis. “Within two to three years, workers will pay $180 to $200 a month. The reality is that 25-to-30 percent of workers will not be able to cover their families, or even themselves.”
According to Lewis, these companies push to have workers pay in part because they know many won’t be able to; fewer people with coverage means the hotels pay less money.
Under the three-year contract that expired on August 14, 2009, workers received free individual health care, were able to cover their families for $10 a month, and received a $30 pension per year of work. Those benefits, however, were not won without a battle. After workers at four hotels called strikes in 2004, management responded by locking workers out for 53 days. A two-year struggle ensued that purportedly cost the city of San Francisco $100 million. Union members and hotel management seem anxious to avoid a similar fiasco, but neither side appears willing to budge.
A one-year contract developed by Local 2 last October would have guaranteed health care and raised hotel payrolls by 1.5 percent, but hotel management rejected the offer. Workers voted that month 2,814 to 234 to authorize leaders to implement boycotts and strikes as necessary. Boycotts have been called at seven of the city’s major hotels, and more than 20 others are at risk of dispute.
“They picked a fight,” says Lewis. “The war is clearly going to continue as long as companies refuse to provide workers with affordable health care.”
On the sidewalk of the Hilton San Francisco, El Tecolote spoke with two members of Local 2’s bargaining committee, a group of 125 rank-and-file leaders who meet to discuss negotiation strategies. Ingrid Carp, a cook at the Hilton, and Guadalupe Chavez, a room cleaner, have been employees at this hotel for 29 years.
“These disputes are a lot of work. There are lobbies, delegations – it’s always a huge struggle,” says Carp.
When Carp and Chavez began working for Hilton San Francisco in the early 1980s, their hotel was Hilton owned and operated. “It was service-oriented – they cared about the guests,” says Carp. According to the two women, now all they care about is money and trimming costs wherever they can. Two people do the jobs of six; new hires don’t receive equal benefits; low seniority workers aren’t given enough hours to qualify for medical benefits. According to Wachovia Capital Markets, 71 workers were responsible for every 100 occupied guestrooms in 1988; in 2008, 53 workers were employed for the same number of rooms.
In addition, the workload for room cleaners like Chavez has increased. “The beds are bigger, the mattresses are heavier,” explains Chavez. “There used to be two pillows, now there are five.” The repetition of lifting the beds and changing the sheets for as many as 30 rooms per shift is a huge strain on the body, says research director Lewis.
Chavez developed carpal tunnel from her work; she no longer has feeling in three fingers on her left hand. Her husband, a retired glass factory worker, has been sick, and he relies on her insurance to cover the cost of his medication.
“We think about family,” says Chavez. “We fight for family and for our future.”
A rigid standard of unity is employed for issues involving Local 2’s members. Bargaining committee leaders coordinate their plans to get identical contracts at each of the city’s hotels. If kitchen workers have an unresolved grievance issue, other departments will approach the kitchen manager and demand a meeting. Carp is upset that her lower seniority coworkers don’t receive the 40 hours a week that she does.
“This is like our family,” she says. “An injury to one is an injury to all.”
Despite the difficulties involved in negotiations, however, Carp remains optimistic. “We always end up winning. We don’t give up.”
Back in the hotel, Michael Dunne, the general manager of the Hilton San Francisco for three and a half years and an employee for six years, is eager to speak to someone from the press, to ensure that his side of the story is heard amid the whistles and racket outside.
According to Dunne, the hotel was close to sold out during the three nights of the strike. “We were ready for it. We knew something was coming.” Most of the staff during the strike had been acquired from other Hilton hotels, as well as some “other companies,” and while room service shut down on Wednesday, it reopened on Thursday and Friday.
A one-year contract, which Dunne says Local 2 is proposing, would be detrimental to the hotel. Hotel meeting spaces are already selling for 2017, and “when you’re dealing with a meeting planner, they want labor peace.”
With health care costs increasing 300 percent in the last decade, and the hotel’s revenue falling 40 percent in 2009 and 20 percent in 2010, according to Dunne, the hotel has to share some of the burden with its workers. “We are seeing a little better occupancy, but rates are horrible. It takes years for rates to improve.”
Riddhi Mehta, the Press Coordinator for Local 2, disputes this claim, saying that PKF Hospitality Research estimates a 2.5 percent increase in revenue this year, and an additional 12-13 percent in 2011 and 2012.
Dunne proposes that a joint committee between hotel management and labor negotiate agreeable health care rates directly with the providers. The wage increases, however, can’t be uncapped, he says. The Hilton San Francisco is one of the only organizations, he claims, that doesn’t pass some of the health care burden along to workers.
Dunne is anxious to return to the negotiating table with Local 2 President Michael Casey, whom he spoke with last week. “Look, this does not help anyone. We want the workers to come back.”
Comments are closed.