On the picket line

Hilton Hotel workers strike in S.F., Hawaii

Workers at the two largest Hilton Hotels went on strike in mid-October. On Oct. 13, 850 workers at the Hilton Union Square in San Francisco, members of UNITE-HERE Local 2 who have been working without a contract since August 2009, walked out at 4 a.m. and stayed out until the same time on Oct. 19. On Oct. 14, 1,500 members of UH Local 5 began a five-day strike at the Hawaiian Village. The workers are protesting the chain’s attempts to lock housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers, bell staff, and food servers into recessionary contracts with higher health care costs, frozen pension contributions and increased workloads. But why is Hilton making such demands when its owner, the private equity firm Blackstone Group, just received a huge government bailout? The Federal Reserve agreed a few days before the strikes to accept payment of $142 million toward the $320 million that Blackstone owed the Fed. The remaining $178 million will be picked from taxpayers’ pockets. As the Wall Street Journal noted, Blackstone’s revenues are projected to increase 50 percent to $2.7 billion, with executives receiving a 12 percent salary hike. No wonder the workers are fighting mad about such in-your-face corporate greed and contempt for them and their families. As WW reporter Joan Marquardt in San Francisco noted in a personal e-mail, “The union maintained a large, vocal picket line through the entire six-day strike, with other workers and community activists joining them daily.” Support the workers’ campaign to make Hilton “Share the Recovery!”

Benefit for Detroit Orchestra strikers

Hundreds of people packed a church in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills on Oct. 24 for a benefit concert by the musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, who have been on strike since Oct. 4. Seventeen members of the Cleveland Orchestra joined them in a show of solidarity. (That orchestra staged a one-day strike earlier this fall that won a pay freeze rather than a 5 percent cut.) Management of the DSO had demanded a 33 percent pay cut with no insurance benefits, no pension contribution and additional unpaid community events. But even though the musicians, represented by Local 5 of the American Federation of Musicians, were willing to accept more than $9 million in salary and benefit cuts, with a 22 percent salary cut next year, management refused to negotiate. As WW reporter Martha Grevatt in Detroit observed in a personal e-mail, “The situation shows that no amount of skill workers may possess can prevent them from facing the determination of capital to lower wages.”

Major tomato growers sign with Immokalee

The relentless campaign to better the working conditions and lives of tomato pickers conducted by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers scored two high-powered wins in mid-October. Pacific Tomato Growers, one of the country’s largest growers, and Six L’s Packing Co., the largest in Florida, agreed to pay a penny more a pound for a bushel of tomatoes and to improve the working conditions of the mostly Latino/a and Haitian immigrant workers. Both companies engage in modern-day slavery, which CIW has pushed the Justice Department to expose and prosecute. As Kari Lydersen notes in In These Times, “The fact that growers are in quick succession now signing on with the coalition shows a historic sea change in farmworker-employer relations — even as the coalition and their allies continue to target tomato buyers, including the Florida-based supermarket Publix, Kroger, Trader Joe’s and Quiznos. (Oct. 22) Not only will another penny raise the workers’ income from about $10,000 to $17,000 a year, but the agreements include a complaint resolution system, a participatory health and safety program, a worker-to-worker education process, and an auditing system to ensure accurate payments. CIW started its Campaign for Fair Food in 2001; since then all the major fast-food outlets have signed on. To take action to support the campaign, go to www.ciw-online.org.