SAN FRANCISCO — “What do we want? Contract!” 2,000 hotel workers chanted Oct. 30 as they marched around Union Square, home to many of the city’s big hotels. The action ended with a sit-in on the cable car tracks outside the Westin St. Francis Hotel, one of five where workers are on strike. Dozens were arrested and released that evening.
The strike by hotel housekeepers, servers, bartenders, cooks, bellhops and other workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 2, began in late September. They’ve maintained loud picket lines, with chanting and drumming, outside the Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott hotels.
A key issue in this fight is the bosses’ push for cuts in health insurance. “We are not going to give up what we have won through past struggles,” Alfredo Corleto, strike captain at the Marriott Union Square, told the Militant Oct. 28. In 2018 workers at the Marriott hotels struck for two months, successfully keeping their health coverage at no cost for single workers and $10 a month for families. “Now the hotel bosses are demanding we pay hundreds of dollars,” Corleto said.
Anthony Tran, a server at the Grand Hyatt, said the cuts bosses are demanding in retiree pensions and health care benefits would hit older workers like himself particularly hard. Many workers with less seniority lost jobs during the COVID shutdowns and never got them back, he said, meaning job combinations are the norm. “They want you to be a server and also bus the dishes,” Tran said. “We’re out here for everybody, for workers today and in the future.”
Supporters of the fight are urged to join the daily picket lines. Donations and messages of support are also welcome. Workers at the Grand Hyatt told the Militant they were buoyed when a worker at a nearby union hotel that is not on strike collected $2,000 from his co-workers to buy food for strikers at the Hyatt.