[Linganth] Fwd: Statement from UNITE HERE

[P. Kerim Friedman]

Below is a statement from Neal Kwatra, a coordinator in the Strategic
Affairs Department with UNITE HERE, the Union that represents the
locked out workers in San Francisco.

- kerim

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Neal Kwatra" <nkwatra at hereunion.org>
Subject: Statement
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 19:40:30 -0400


I am Neal Kwatra, a coordinator in the Strategic Affairs Department
with UNITE HERE, the Union that represents the locked out workers in
San Francisco.

Leaders and members of the AAA have asked me to address some of the
issues your organization has been debating over the last week.

We sincerely appreciate the AAA for not crossing the picket line and
moving the convention out of San Francisco, however, we would have
preferred a different outcome than the contract swap with Hilton in
Atlanta. Thank you for all your hard work on this issue, our members in
San Francisco and throughout the country truly appreciate your support
and solidarity. The best way to support our locked out members in this
struggle and long-term, is to work with us and other organizations on a
long-term program to level the playing field between multinational
hotel corporations and their workers.

The link below will give you an opportunity to better understand the
issues our members are so courageously fighting for in San Francisco.

http://www.unitehere2.org/issues.html

I think it is important to provide you with some of the history of our
efforts to arrive at a solution that would work for the AAA, its
members and for the thousands of locked out hotel workers on the
streets in San Francisco, who are without livelihood for the duration
of the lockout.

Our Union initially reached out to the AAA on August 30. We offered to
work with your organization on alternative locations that would be of
minimal disruption (San Jose). Because we have experience working with
other groups, in the context of labor disputes, we offered to work with
your staff on the liability issues as well. We offered to work in
partnership to come up with a mutually beneficial situation for the AAA
and our members in San Francisco. Unfortunately, we were never able to
advance the conversation with your staff.

The first time anyone in the leadership or staff of the AAA reached out
to our Union to discuss this situation was early last week when I
received a call from President-elect Alan Goodman. He was very clear
that his goal was to work with UNITE HERE in a constructive fashion to
support our locked out members in SF, while simultaneously finding a
viable solution for the AAA.

Despite good-faith efforts on his part to explore mutually beneficial
options like San Jose, another school of thought prevailed. Alan
Goodman has been a helpful partner in our collective efforts to support
the locked out workers in SF and I look forward to working with him and
others within the AAA as the struggle for hotel worker justice
continues.

The AAA has an enormous amount of power in its relationships with
corporations like Hilton. For the Hiltons and Marriotts of the world,
what matters most is maintaining the AAA as a long-term client; they
want your business year-after-year. They are too smart and savvy to
risk severing a relationship with a key customer like the AAA over a
situation like the one in San Francisco. In the big picture, $1.2
million is not what is important to them; a very long and very
profitable relationship with the AAA and other academic organizations
is more important to them in the long run than $1.2 million in the
short term. Additionally, in a competitive marketplace they cannot
afford a reputation as a company that sues its customers.

For an organization whose scholarship and research often focuses on
power relationships, your organization made a decision, in my opinion,
that did not take into account the power-you have as an organization-in
your relationship with Hilton. Having said that, we are especially
grateful to the AAA members, leaders and activists who galvanized
support among the membership and who lead the effort to convince the
AAA's leadership that crossing a picket line in SF was completely
antithetical to everything your organization stands for. Many people
have asked what the AAA can do moving forward to support the hotel
workers struggle in SF and around the country. Given your unique
relationship with the Hilton Corporation, concrete steps the AAA can
take that would have a dramatic impact on the struggle of hotel workers
in this country include:

· ensuring that your staff has strong "force majeure" language in your
hotel contracts, to address labor disputes. You should never have to
decide between the risk of litigation and crossing boycott or picket
lines. We can work with the AAA on suggested ?force majeure? contract
language.

· a wholesale reexamination of your relationship with Hilton Hotels. In
order for there to be some lasting impact of your move out of San
Francisco, Hilton needs to understand that a swap to Atlanta is not
where the issue ends. It is my understanding that you are scheduled to
be back at the San Francisco Hilton in 2006 and 2008, but you are not
contractually obligated beyond that. We have very concrete ideas about
what you can do with Hilton to have a broader impact on the current and
long term struggle for justice for workers in the hotel industry and we
would welcome the opportunity to work with all of you on those ideas.

We are working with many other academic organizations (Sociologists,
Geographers, American Studies and others) and progressive groups
(women's, civil rights, immigrant rights, religious) on a coordinated
program to deal with the hotel industry. Your organization and others
like it represent hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity
for these hotel corporations. We need to work together as a cohesive,
progressive movement to affect real change in the relationship between
these corporations and workers in the hotel industry.

Si Se Puede!

FYI- for those attending the meeting in Atlanta, the Hyatt Regency is
currently our only union-hotel in Atlanta.

Hyatt Regency Atlanta
265 Peachtree Street North East
Atlanta, GA 30303
Phone: (404) 577-1234

For those of you who want to make a contribution to our locked out
members
in San Francisco, here is the information:

Local 2 Solidarity Fund
UNITE HERE! Local 2
209 Golden Gate Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102

In Solidarity,
Neal Kwatra
Strategic Affairs Department
UNITE HERE




--------------------------------------
kathryn.clancy at yale.edu
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Anthropology

"Girl, you've got some nerve
Taking everything that you deserve."
          -the Nields, "Georgia O"

www.geso.org




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