Baltimore: Solidarity with Locked-Out Hotel Workers; Arrests

BALTIMORE, MD (11/9/04)--If you crossed Light Street walking east on the south side of Pratt around 5:00pm today, you would have noticed on your left a Baltimore Police Department squad car and a police van with back doors open and, in full view, 10 seats waiting for potential arrestees with seat belts opened to embrace them. On your right, a rally of 150-200 listening to speakers and chanting.

By 5:15pm, 14 individuals were arrested and cuffed by police after they stepped onto Pratt Street, or were slow on clearing the sidewalk after a police order to keep the walkway clear. The arrestees were members and staff of UNITE!-HERE (the recently merged union of garment, laundry, hotel, and restaurant workers) and members of the Baltimore community supporting striking and locked-out workers in San Francisco.

The protest was a solidarity rally for 4,000 hotel workers locked out by the management of 14 hotels in San Francisco, California.

September 14, 2004, 97.3% of the membership that voted (77%) of Local 2 UNITE!-HERE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees--Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union) authorized a strike. Further attempts at negotiation failed. Then on September 29th, Local 2 began a two-week strike at four San Francisco hotels. The Multi-Employer Group (MEG), the umbrella hotel employers association, responded two days later with a lockout of the workers of 10 more union hotels.

What are the union members' issues?

* Comprehensive health care for hotel workers', their families, and retirees;
* Fully funded pensions;
* Fair wage increases;
* Right of union representation for workers in newly developed hotels;
* Unreasonable work loads (The September 11 terrorism attacks injured US tourism; the hotel industry responded by keeping the employment level down);
* Right to collectively bargain in 2006 when contracts expire.

Baltimore's Local 7 of UNITE!-HERE helped organize this rally. Hotel workers physically demonstrated aspects of their work using two beds as props; speakers included Fred Mason, president of the Maryland/DC AFL-CIO. The very red banner of UNITE!-HERE Mid-Atlantic Region contrasted beautifully with the increasing black of the evening. The activists arrested began their civil disobedience with the last lines of the chant "Who's got he power?/We've got the power./What kind of power?/Union power!"

Baltimore Indymedia readers may remember the 2001 60 day strike of laundry workers, members of UNITE! The organizers of that strike reached out to a diverse Baltimore constituency--students, Johns Hopkins University alumnae, the NAACP, Greens, and anarchists. Then, they won, using a variety of tactics. Maybe today's solidarity action for hotel workers is a sign that labor in Baltimore is waking from its slumbers.

More on the San Francisco struggle:
http://www.unitehere.com/

On the 2001 UNITE! strike:
http://baltimore.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/16