Calif. Hotel Walk-Off Strike Continues New Wave of Worker Militancy
Micah Uetrich | Common Dreams
August 26, 2010
The Embassy Suites hotel in Irvine, Calif., bears a number of similarities to workplaces around the country.
Like other workers around the country, employees there say they’re getting squeezed. They’re expected to do more with less: fewer supplies, fewer breaks, and less money. Like the vast majority of American workers, they’re not unionized. Company-wide profits, however, seem to be doing okay.
But in a move rarely seen since the Great Depression, Embassy Suites workers went on strike early this month over alleged lost wages. Although as nonunion workers they had few legal rights to protect their actions[*], they were united and angry. On August 9, workers walked off the job and formed a picket line at the hotel’s entrance.
It was the latest in a series of bold actions by workers affiliated with UNITE HERE, the hotel workers union, this summer. In May, organizers at the Hyatt Regency Chicago were denied access to hotels to speak with workers; in response, the workers staged a brief wildcat walkout.
Last month, almost a thousand UNITE HERE workers and community supporters were arrested in civil disobedience actions around the country—many in cities where such actions had not occurred for decades—against the Hyatt corporation. And now the Embassy workers in Irvine walked off the job despite a lack of union recognition.
While the action isn’t widespread, the Irvine workers have not been the only ones to strike without official collective bargaining representation. In July, non-union immigrant workers in Morganton, N.C., went on a wildcat strike over work conditions.
Early this year, Roger Bybee asked on this blog why the 2008 Republic Windows and Doors factory occupation had not inspired an uptick in worker militancy. But looking back on the past year, it appears a small but increasing number of workers are willing to use increasingly gutsy actions to take on their bosses.
Read more @ CommonDreams.org.
* Editor’s note: Under Section Seven of the National Labor Relations Act, non-unionized workers have nearly all of the same rights as do unionized workers with regard to acting in concert. This includes the Right to Strike. The writer of the article is incorrect in his assertion that non-union workers have “few legal rights to protect their actions.”
