On the picket line

D.C. hotel workers demand union

Chanting, “No contract, no peace!” hundreds of workers at the Sheraton Crystal City hotel and community activists banged drums and blew whistles outside the Washington, D.C., hotel on Jan. 16, demanding the workers’ right to form a union. For over a year, workers at the hotel have been fighting HEI Hotels and Resorts, the management company that owns the hotel, for blocking their attempts to join a union and for harassing and threatening to fire them for pro-union activity. “I was a cook for over six years, but recently I was demoted to housekeeping because my managers see me marching for union recognition,” Herman Romero told Union City, the online newsletter of the Metro Washington AFL-CIO Council. (Jan. 18) “They constantly increase our workload and give us less supplies to accomplish our work. We deserve to be treated better than this.” Unfair labor practice charges have been filed with the National Labor Relations Board by UNITE HERE, and a hearing is scheduled for April 6.

Workers take on Verizon

Verizon, one of the country’s most profitable companies, is always looking for easy ways to boost its bottom line. But union members are exposing its plans as bad for customers, workers and communities. On Jan. 11 over 800 members of the Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers rallied at the West Virginia state Capitol in Charleston to oppose a projected Verizon plan to sell 4.8 million landlines in 14 states to Frontier. While the deal would decrease Verizon’s tax burden by an estimated $600 million, unionists say it would only lead to job and service cuts as Verizon’s 2008 sale of landlines has already done in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. The same week members of CWA Local 222 held picket lines in Herndon and Centerville, Va., to protest Verizon’s plan to cut 1,000 jobs in Maryland, Virginia and D.C.

U.S. labor union research delegation visits Cuba

A diverse group of labor activists in the Washington, D.C., area affiliated with the AFL-CIO and Change to Win visited Cuba from Jan. 10 to 17. Before leaving, members of the delegation agreed on demands: to end the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba, to stop the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba and to establish normal diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba. The delegation’s research on Cuban labor unions was facilitated by the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, the country’s national labor federation.

Labor for Haiti

The U.S. labor movement swung into action to show solidarity with the Haitian people after the devastating earthquake there on Jan. 12. The AFL-CIO Solidarity Center set up Earthquake Relief for Haitian Workers on www.aflcio.org and has been collecting donations in the thousands of dollars. The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists has already raised more than $25,000. The Transport Workers Union, many of whose members are Haitian, has set up a disaster relief task force. Hundreds of nurses and paramedics in the National Nurses Union have volunteered to provide medical services, while members of the Air Traffic Controllers have partnered with their Dominican counterparts to help facilitate air traffic in Port-au-Prince. Individual unions have also made contributions, ranging from $1,000 to $500,000, to various charities. Meanwhile, the global online labor news service, www.labourstart.org, lists the various international unions that are sending aid, volunteers and support to Haiti.