Last Friday night, the Bay Area Reporter held a 35th anniversary celebration for its advertisers and members of the National Gay Newspaper Guild. This was a great moment in the history of the LGBT movement in San Francisco, given what a key role the B.A.R. has played in our community. We honor the incredible contributions that the B.A.R. has made on behalf of our community.
We were also very disappointed at the venue selected for the event, as the party took place at the Fairmont Hotel. The hotel is at the center of an ongoing labor dispute between hotel corporations and their workers, and, along with 12 other local hotels, is currently being boycotted for refusing to sign a contract with decent wages, adequate healthcare, and safe working conditions.
If this were simply an issue of an LGBT organization holding an event at a hotel with labor problems, the issue would come and go, with views being expressed and the issue ultimately fading away. But, the issue is much bigger than any one event or labor dispute. The hotel workers' struggle is about the future of organized labor and the future of the American middle class. Just as the hotel workers have always stood with our community – supporting our struggle for equality for more than 25 years – the LGBT community must stand with the hotel workers. The hotel workers union, Unite HERE Local 2, was the first union in the country to secure domestic partner benefits in a contract. It also demanded and was successful in forcing the hotels to pay into an HIV/AIDS fund. Most recently Local 2 has led the charge within labor and the community for marriage equality.
For the last two years, hotel workers have been in contract negotiations with a group of 14 luxury hotels, including the Fairmont Hotel. They have engaged in strikes, lockouts and boycotts all for the purpose of negotiating at the same time as hotel workers across North America. This nationwide negotiating power would provide workers with the power to negotiate for decent healthcare, respectable wages, and pensions, as well as the right of non-union hotel workers to choose a union without harassment or intimidation by management.
In addition to the struggle to make hotel jobs decent jobs, hotel workers are also striving to win key civil rights gains. Over the past 10 years, the percentage of African American workers employed by the boycotted hotels has dropped significantly. This drop has had a significant adverse impact on the African American community, by reducing access to jobs with good wages and health benefits. If the hotel workers are able to negotiate on a nationwide scale, they will be able to demand that the hotels include affirmative action in their hiring policies. Here in San Francisco, the hotels have all but ignored this proposal.
Over the past several decades, corporate consolidation has resulted in mammoth hotel chains, like the Hilton, Hyatt, and the Marriott, which are posting record profits. Those profits, however, are not reflected in the wages paid to hotel workers. The hotel industry employs 1.3 million workers, most at poverty wages, with the average annual income at $17,340. Unionization of hotel workers will make all the difference in changing this situation. For example, union room cleaners make $15 per hour in San Francisco, where 90 percent of the hotel workers are unionized. Compare that wage with Atlanta, where room cleaners make $7.45 per hour and only 5 percent of the hotels are union.
The hotel workers want to address this income disparity through a coordinated strategy. If the hotels do not provide adequate wages and health care for their hard-working employees (for example, hotel room cleaners, who perform some of the most back-breaking and injury-prone work around), the workers will be in a position to demand those benefits, and the hotels will have to listen, given that a nationwide boycott or strike would be devastating, even to a group of huge corporations.
This fight is not just about hotel workers. It is about the future of the American middle class. Unionization in the private sector has plummeted over the past 50 years from 33 percent to 8 percent. During that same time period, the middle class has taken a big hit. More and more, our country is comprised of those with means and those without. The deep and broad-based American middle class – which has been the primary anchor of our political and economic stability – is being squeezed and is shrinking.
Which America do you want? We suspect that you agree with us that a strong middle class is what America needs and wants. As a result, we cannot stand by and watch while workers' collective-bargaining rights are eroded and eventually destroyed. We, as LGBT people, must stand with the hotel workers, and with American workers generally. This is a matter not just of economic justice, but of our national self-interest in preserving the large and stable middle class that has made our nation great.
Scott Wiener and Robert Haaland are elected members of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee. Wiener is co-chair of the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, and Haaland is past president of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club.
[Publisher's note: The B.A.R. would not have proceeded with the event, scheduled for well over a year, had the union work stoppage continued. The B.A.R.'s editorial position in support of working men and women over the last 35 years speaks for itself. We join with the members of Local 2, who worked this event, in encouraging the parties to rapidly agree on a fair contract.]