Hotel workers flood San Francisco City Hall amid strike

SAN FRANCISCO - Hundreds of hotel workers showed up to a San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, urging the board to push their hotel management to negotiate a fair contract after several weeks of being on strike.

From Honolulu to Boston, thousands of hotel employees across the country have been picketing since last month as major hotel corporations, including Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt, negotiate with the Unite Here union that represents the majority of those chains' hotel workers. The Unite Here Local 2 chapter, which represents over 15,000 hospitality workers in San Francisco, is leading the strike that started Sept. 22. 

Workers with three major hotels in the city, Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Grand Hyatt San Francisco and Marriott's Westin St. Francis, say that the higher-ups of the hotels are cutting costs at the expense of employees and hotel guests and want to remove their health insurance.

Board president Aaron Peskin called for a special hearing that took place at Tuesday's board meeting so hotel workers could explain why they are on strike and describe their working conditions.

"For the past two weeks, hotel workers have been protesting against painful workloads and wages that aren't enough to afford the cost of living and affordable health care," Peskin said. 

Anand Singh, a negotiator for the union, explained what led to the strike.

Since April, the union has been trying to make a deal with the hotels on a new contract that expired at the end of August. With no progress made, workers have walked off the job in the fight for a fair contract that includes better wages, health insurance, a reversal of COVID-19 pandemic-era job cuts and restoring fair staffing minimums to resolve being overworked, Singh said. 

"The typical Local 2 member earns about $53,000 per year. But combine that salary with comprehensive health care coverage, retirement benefits and workplace protections and that's been the basis for sustaining thousands of families in San Francisco for many years," Singh said. "All of that is at stake right now in this moment." 

Many San Francisco hotel workers are demanding higher salaries in order to live where they work, saying that they can barely afford to live in the city. 

"Hotels grow their profits and every few years, the industry's deal with hotel employees in this city comes up for renegotiation," said Lizzy Tapia, president of the union. "The big hotel companies, Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt in particular, are taking advantage of that moment to lock in wages that are very far below the cost of living."

Micheal D'Angelo, head of labor relations for the Americas region of Hyatt, denied the allegations that Hyatt is negotiating an unfair contract.

"We have offered competitive wages, health care and retirement benefits at the hotel that is on strike at this time," he said in a statement. 

"We are disappointed that Unite Here Local 2 continues to strike while Hyatt remains willing to continue bargaining in good faith," D'Angelo said. "Colleague benefits and wages remain unchanged as we negotiate a new agreement. We look forward to continuing to negotiate fair contracts and recognize the contributions of Hyatt employees."

Dozens of hotel workers on strike spoke at Tuesday's meeting to describe why they are on strike, asking for support from the board. The majority of them were immigrants who have worked at the hotels for multiple decades.

Jennifer Huang has been working at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square hotel for almost 30 years. She is a member of the union and joined the strike to demand a pay raise and good health care coverage in the new contract. 

"The land, the living costs and the significant inflation has increased over years, so I need a wage increase so that my family can continue (to) stay in stay in San Francisco," she said at the board meeting. "Sometimes I think I might need to leave the city because I can barely afford it." 

Another primary grievance from the hotel workers is that upper management from the three major hotel corporations does not want to commit to providing quality health insurance in the contract. 

"I'm on strike because I will not let the Hilton take away our health care," said John Elrod, a bartender at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square. "They play games with the insurance we rely on. Even though I worked enough hours to qualify, I recently went five consecutive months without health care coverage because the employer did not make the contribution to the fund. I was forced to cut my pills, my medication, in half, so I could make it until my health insurance got restored. It was a very harrowing experience."

When the pandemic hit, hotel corporations cut staffing levels. However, these cuts have continued and staffing minimums never returned to pre-pandemic levels, leading to remaining employees being overworked and lower quality service to guests, Tapia said. 

"Every time there's a downturn, we've seen hotel owners get more and more aggressive about trying to lock in the reduced staffing levels," Singh said. "Even when business comes back, they reduce service levels and try to persuade customers to accept less cleaning, fewer amenities, less of everything, all while continuing to pay high room prices. The short-term profit that they seek threatens the reputation of hotels with their own customers over the long term."

Bill Fung has been working as a carpet cleaner at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square hotel for about 30 years. As the only carpet cleaner, he has been tasked to shampoo all of the carpets in each of the hotel's three buildings, a job that was previously divided between three cleaners. 

"Our hotel has three buildings, almost 2,000 rooms. Before the pandemic, they had three shampoo persons to take care of the carpets. But after the pandemic, they cut two people and forced me to clean the entire hotel: rooms, hallways, offices and public areas all by myself." 

Supervisor Myrna Melgar agreed that service at hotels has been lackluster while recounting her experience staying at a hotel in Napa Valley.

"About three months ago, my husband and I went to Napa. We stayed at a hotel and paid so much money for one night," she said. "When we got there, the spa was closed and the things that were advertised on the website for all of the money we paid for were not quite there. I was so enraged ... our industry has cut all these corners during the pandemic at the expense of the workers but also at the expense of consumers." 

In July 2020, the board unanimously passed an emergency ordinance to establish minimum cleaning standards for hotels to prevent the spread of COVID-19. However, Singh said that this requirement has not been sufficiently met.

"In the years that these rules have been in existence, it's been very hard to enforce them," Singh said. "Because enforcement is very rare, the law doesn't mean anything if there's no way to hold employers accountable for that. We're especially seeing that with the cutting of staff after the pandemic. Hotels are not clean the way they should be. They're not clean the way they used to be."

The dozens of speeches of the hotel workers appeared to resonate with multiple members of the Board of Supervisors. Some of them have also joined them on the ground to participate in the strikes and show their support.

"Hotel owners, listen up, these workers and this Board of Supervisors are standing hand in hand," said Supervisor Hillary Ronen. "You're not going to continue to operate in San Francisco if you don't respect our laws and respect our workers."

Several supervisors committed to fully supporting the strike until a fair contract is accepted by the hotels. 

"The major hotel corporations absolutely need to just come to the table," Supervisor Dean Preston said. "Do right by your workers. Stop whining. We will be out there supporting the workers as long as it takes."