On the picket line

NYC building workers set to strike

More than 30,000 doorpeople, janitors, porters, handypeople and superintendents who keep thousands of New York City’s elite residential buildings humming are set to strike at 12:01 a.m. on April 21 if the Realty Advisory Board doesn’t stop demanding what Service Employees Local 32BJ called “unfair and unacceptable cuts to health care, overtime and sick days” in a March 17 statement. When negotiations stalled in early April, Local 32BJ members voted unanimously to strike. The union has scheduled a rally for April 13 to tell New York’s $584 billion real-estate industry, which has been flush with cash during this recession, that they will not bow down to unreasonable demands to further line the already-stuffed pockets of greedy landlords.

Hotel workers’ actions across U.S.

The 850 workers at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square hotel walked out April 7-10 as part of UNITE HERE Local 2’s ongoing struggle for a decent contract. The billion-dollar hotel industry wants the workers to pay more for health care, but the low-paid workers say they can’t afford what the bosses propose. The union has held rolling strikes since the contract expired in August 2009. With negotiations stalled since December and none scheduled, Local 2 plans other strikes targeting the top 60 high-priced hotels. In the meantime it’s called a boycott of six hotels: the Hilton Union Square and Hilton Fisherman’s Wharf, Westin St. Francis, W Hotel, Grand Hyatt and Le Meridien Hotel.

Employees of Columbia Sussex Corp., the fourth-biggest hotel owner in the U.S. with 67 hotels, called a boycott of seven hotels the week of March 22. Members of UNITE HERE say the layoffs, pay freezes, benefit reductions and health-care cuts have got to stop. The company is trying to bleed the workers as it scrambles to pay off more than $1 billion it borrowed to buy 14 hotels in 2005. The union calls for a boycott of seven hotels, three unionized and four unorganized, to support a union organizing drive. The union hotels are the Baltimore Sheraton City Center, Hilton Crystal City outside D.C. and the Anchorage Hilton. The non-union hotels are the Westin Washington, D.C., City Center, Westin Emerald Plaza San Diego, Wyndham Chicago and Westin Chicago Northwest.

DOL workers ‘ready to march’

During a March 31 union town hall meeting, workers at the Department of Labor, represented by Government Employees Local 12, accused Labor Secretary Hilda Solis of acting like her Bush predecessor. Contract negotiations, including such issues as paid family leave, flexible work schedules, teleworking and ending management nepotism, have dragged on for more than a year. Workers intend to picket the DOL with an inflatable rat. (Union City!, online newsletter of Metro Washington Council AFL-CIO, April 1)

S.F. Labor demands jobs for all

As part of a four-year review by the United Nations Human Rights Council designed to ensure that the U.S. complies with a number of U.N. treaties mandating full employment, the right to a job and union rights, the San Francisco Labor Council passed a resolution March 15 requesting that it collaborate with other labor organizations in writing a report to be delivered to the UNHRC. Among other provisions the report will call on the U.S. to enforce the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978, “remove all obstacles to organizing workers and encourage Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act,” and post all U.N. treaties that mandate workers’ rights in every workplace in the U.S.