Category: Jobs

MARRIOTT WORKERS: “ONE JOB SHOULD BE ENOUGH!”

Photographs by David Bacon
Click to see all photos

HONOLULU, HI – 16MAY18 – Hotel workers in Hawaii are protesting low wages that force many workers to work an additional job besides their job at the hotel. Copyright David Bacon

On June 27 thousands of union and non-union Marriott workers organized demonstrations in San Francisco, Oakland, Honolulu, Boston, San Diego, Seattle, Philadelphia and San Jose. Workers carried signs saying, “One Job Should Be Enough!” About 20,000 Marriott workers are represented by Unite Here. As contract negotiations get underway, some 12,000 of those employees have contracts expiring later this year.

Marriott is the largest and richest hotel company on the planet, earning $22.9 billion in 2017. Profits have gone up 279% since the recession, while hotel workers’ annual income only increased 7%.

According to D. Taylor, International President of UNITE HERE, “Too often workers welcome guests to Marriott hotels and deliver an unforgettable experience to them, just to leave their shift and go to a second job because working full time for Marriott isn’t enough to make ends meet.”

Marriott became the biggest global hotel chain when it acquired Starwood for $13.6 billion in 2016. The company’s 30 brands include Ritz-Carlton, Westin and Sheraton, accounting for more than 1.2 million rooms in over 6500 hotels in 127 countries and territories. It opens a new hotel every 18 hours.

Technology is transforming hotel work, with self-check-in kiosks, robot room-service delivery, and mechanical bartenders. In negotiations, workers want guarantees that jobs will not only pay enouogh to live on, but will last during this period of change.

Meanwhile, hotel work is not just underpaid, but is dangerous. In Chicago the union found roughly half of hotel housekeepers had been the victims of sexual misconduct from guests. One man assaulted housekeepers in DC eight times over eight years. A Florida Marriott worker was assaulted in a hotel bathroom. In San Francisco a man committed suicide after attacking and critically injuring a housekeeper.

In negotiations Unite Here is not only demanding increases in wages and benefits, but greater protections, including panic buttons. This year the Chicago union won them for workers with a campaign, Hands Off, Pants On.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – 8MAY18 – Hotel workers at the Sheraton Palace Hotel in San Francisco are protesting low wages that force many workers to work an additional job besides their job at the hotel. Copyright David Bacon

Click to see all photos

MAY DAY MARCH FOR “UN OTRO MUNDO”

The old Boise Cascade plywood mill, closed in 2006. The original mill complex on the Yakima River was started in 1903.
by David Bacon
The Progressive / On The Line – 7/21/17

The face of work and poverty in Yakima ranges from a closed mill of the city’s past to the agricultural fields of its present.

At the edge of town is the rusting structure of the old Boise Cascade plywood plant, where many of this small city’s people worked for over a hundred years. Little houses in the surrounding neighborhood were originally built for mill workers. Now many are the homes of laborers in the valley’s fields and packing sheds. Yakima always was and still is a farm worker town.

The closure of the plant is one reason why those homes have seen better days. Rick, who lives in a tent camp set up by homeless people on the street downtown, says he’d like things to go back to the way they used to be. “There was work for everyone,” he remembers.

… See full article

FIGHTING FOR THE SANCTUARY WORKPLACE

OAKLAND, CA – 21JANUARY17 – The Women’s March Against Trump in Oakland – Women from community organizations and unions in Oakland, together with men, marched through the downtown district, carrying banners and blocking streets, to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S. President, at the same time the inauguration was taking place in Washington DC. Members and organizers of Unitehere Local 2850, the union for hotel and restaurant workers in the East Bay, turn thumbs down on the idea of Trump as President.
Copyright David Bacon

By David Bacon
Truthout | Report 6/24/17

Sanctuary churches. Sanctuary schools. Sanctuary cities.

Sanctuary workplaces?

Albeit far from its intentions, the Trump administration has put the idea of sanctuaries on steroids — spaces free from the threat of raids and deportations. As immigrant workers, unions and their allies look for creative ways to counter anti-immigrant onslaughts, they’re adopting the sanctuary framework to deal with the dangers faced on the job.

Read the entire article