SAN FRANCISCO : 61 arrests at protest over hotel labor talks

Union called action; contract end date key

by Glen Martin

Most Bay Area residents may have celebrated Labor Day with prodigious quantities of beer and barbecue, but some marked it the old-fashioned way — by getting arrested.

Sixty-one union members and sympathizers staged a sit-down at the Grand Hyatt Hotel at Union Square in San Francisco to call attention to a yearlong dispute with 14 hotels over new labor contracts.

They were arrested, charged with misdemeanors for interfering with a place of business, and released. As police fitted them with plastic handcuffs, several hundred pickets marched on Stockton Street, chanting union songs and slogans.

Mike Casey, the president of Local Two of UNITE HERE!, the union representing Bay Area service employees in the conflict, was one of those arrested.

Saying said the union was making progress, he noted that managers of the Westin St. Francis signaled their willingness last week to accept an August 2006 expiration date for any new contract. The expiration date has been a key sticking point. The union has insisted on August 2006, while most hotel owners favor March 2007.

"I think they’re starting to realize that there’s no stopping time, that we’re going to get to a 2006 expiration one way or the other so they might as well get a little labor peace out of the deal," Casey said.

The 2006 expiration date would match the cycle of hotel contracts in New York, Chicago, Toronto, Monterey and other cities, and significantly enhance the local union’s clout with national chains.

The parties are also arguing over health benefits and pay.

A union-supported boycott of the 14 hotels, says John Marks, who leads the city’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, has led to the cancellation of more than 78,000 room nights and direct losses to the hotels of about $47 million.

Steve Trent, a spokesman for the organization that represents the hotels, the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group, called the boycott irresponsible Monday.

Some union members and sympathizers said the dispute is heightened by the fact that the hotels are generally owned by large corporations.

"In the old days, you could sit down with the Swigs and the Goldmans, the local families that owned the local hotels, and work things out," said Mike Hardeman, a representative of district council 36 of the Painters and Allied Trades International Union.

Tourists seemed a tad perplexed at the sight of hundreds of pickets marching around Union Square.

"I’m a union contractor from St. Louis, and we’re a pretty labor-oriented community," said Bob Sieckhaus, who has been in town since Wednesday. "When I see something like this, the first thing I wonder about is a federal mediator. When things get to this point, you have to have someone come in and get it resolved."

In other labor activities around the region on Monday, several hundred university and hospital workers marched on Stanford Hospital to demand better pay and benefits. Protesters converged at the new UC Merced campus, claiming the university is unfairly pegging pay raises to worker willingness to cross picket lines.

And domestic workers announced they were forming a coalition with lawyers and researchers that they hope will boost their efforts at improving their work lives.

E-mail Glen Martin at glenmartin@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c...