Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
10-29-21
"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable. Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves. It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich." *
Some good interviews here with hotel workers who are demanding to be able to return to work. They are members of UNITE/HERE local 2. The hotel owners have done very well during this pandemic and the workers say that the bosses are using the pandemic to keep them at home. They have also been without a contract for almost four years.
In the past, the union bargained with a multi-employer group where the local would target one of the big hotels and then go to others in order to get them to sign on to the deal. This is also common in auto when the contracts for the big three, Ford, Chrysler/Fiat and GM come up.
After the last strike in 2018 that targeted the Marriot chain nationally, one of the most anti-union hotels, The Omni, part of a nationwide chain, refused to sign on to the 2018 settlement.
It is great to listen to the comments from the workers and their loyalty to their union. Ordinary working class people built unions at a great sacrifice to themselves and their families, it would be a catastrophe for workers to lose them and anyone who has had to work non-union would in general agree that a bad union is better than no union. The reality is it is what we make it. It is not a choice that in general we have to wage an internal struggle against the pro-market policies of our own leaders, but fight that battle we must; we do not deal the cards we have to play.
It is very common to hear the ILWU and Harry Bridges mentioned whenever the issue of the union movement in San Francisco comes up and we hear it in this video and that San Francisco is a union town.
But Harry Bridges and the famous San Francisco General Strike was over 80 years ago, there were three General Strikes that year (1934) and a lot has changed since then.
To be a union town, in a sense of exercising union power, workers have to be able to confront the employers as a group, not as individual unions and it is not a sign of union power that a company can get away with refusing to sign a contract for years and, in many cases, treat workers the way they do. The San Francisco Labor Council has some 100,000 members and beyond that, has members in key industries and trades; it has the power to shut down the economy of San Francisco and in conjunction with other Labor Councils in the Bay Area, shut down the region’s economy. It is relying on our own strength and position in the workplace that will change the balance of class forces in these battles.
California has the 6th largest economy in the world close to a GDP of $3 trillion in 2020. While the percentage of workers in unions has shrunk (particularly in the private sector) as the labor hierarchy has capitulated to the offensive of capital, key industries are organized.
In conjunction, as this blog has already pointed out, there is a bit of an uptick in strike activity
as workers are taking advantage of favorable conditions to make gains, this is
true of the organized and unorganized alike. One thing is absolutely certain,
if what is being labelled striketober 2021begins to take on the characteristics
of a wider movement against the bosses’, organized labor will also be convulsed
by such a development, the two will feed off each other as union and non-union
organically seek allies. There has been a tremendous anger building up in US
society for a decades and US labor history and working class history in general
has a rich militant tradition. Having never had a national party of our own,
gains in all walks have life have been won through physical battles in the
streets and on picket lines. They have been one in opposition to the laws not
by obeying it.
The restaurant and hotel workers, what is often referred to as the hospitality industry, are fighting global corporations. Omni has some 50 hotels in the US and Canada and “In December 2020, unions criticized Omni for using the Paycheck Protection Program to obtain a low-interest loan for business purposes, rather than using the money to pay workers”. The Marriot Hotel chain is a global giant “…with 582 hotels and resorts….”
We are also up
against the mass media that is biased, as are the police, the courts and other
institutions of capitalism. Union/worker
power will be built by mass violation of anti-union anti-worker laws not by
appealing to so-called friendly politicians in the Democratic Party.
Also view:
Organized Labor's Rank and File Pushes Back
14 million Union Members: Why Their Leadership Won't Fight
* 1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellows to abandon the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people's problems. Philip Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192
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