Hotel Quickie Strikes Build Union, Workers’ Determination for Contract Battles

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6425/hotel_quickie_strikes_build_union_workers_determination_for_contract_b/

Saturday September 11 5:39 pm

By David Moberg

As hotel workers’ union contracts have expired in several major cities across the country, managers are pushing cuts in health benefits, refusing to hire laid-off or new workers (even as room occupancy increases), and trying to lock in recession wages well into more prosperous years to come.

Workers in Chicago, like most of these cities, are responding with overwhelming strike authorization votes, protest rallies, sit-ins and civil disobedience, campaigns to persuade organizations and individuals to boycott certain hotels, and–last week–a planned one-day strike against hotel union UNITE HERE’s national target, Hyatt, in four cities.

Besides the strike organized by the local union in Chicago, there was also an unexpected worker protest to the Sheraton Chicago hotel manager over his refusal to hire needed but laid-off workers. That turned into a walkout by nearly all the workers on the shift—the second spontaneous walk-out at a hotel in the city this year.

These protests by themselves are not likely to force the billionaire Pritzker family, still the Hyatt chain’s principal investor, to strike a reasonable deal with the union, says Chicago’s Unite Here Local 1 president Henry Tamarin, but they are both building and demonstrating a willingness of workers to militantly act together.

“Whatever we think it is for four locals to go out, hopefully it demonstrates our collective resolve,” Tamarin says. “This is the first time we’ve been able to do it or have done it. I think it’s an excellent development that sets the stage for more cooperative action...Workers emerge from this much stronger.”

The striking workers at the Hyatt O’Hare, near Chicago’s airport, belong to UNITE HERE's small suburban Local 450, which had never called a strike of any duration since it was established. Organizers from Local 1 had worked over many months on “internal organization” to build up the steward system, educate workers and prepare them for action.

FULL story at link.