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Minority workers a driving force in SF
hotel strike
By Peter Micek and R.M. Arrieta
San Francisco, California, Nov. 10 — At a downtown Holiday
Inn hotel miles away from the city’s glamorous 5-star properties,
Estradita Gayoso, a housekeeper at the hotel walks the picket line every
morning. She is one of the approximately 4,000 city hotel workers who
have been on strike since Oct. 1. They are demanding a better-paying
contract, health care benefits and the right to renegotiate in two years
— and are staunch in their resolve.
Gayoso, originally from the Philippines, sat on the steps to a side
entrance to the hotel while taking a break. She has been a cleaning
person there for the past 30 years and says this is her first strike.
She says the long hours on the picket line are worth it if she can obtain
better health care benefits for her and her two children.
“We feel we have to do it,” said Cecilia Morelos, also from
the Philippines. “It’s not a very good experience.” She
says her son had planned to go to college in December but she says instead
she told him that he must get a job. “I’m locked out.”
A bartender, Mandy Tom remembers her grandfather came to the United
States from China to build the railroads, while her grandmother worked
in a sweatshop. The anti-union stance of the hotels, she says, is a
return to the past.
A major sticking point of the negotiations has been the duration of
the contract. Union negotiators want the expiration to coincide with
the expiration of other hotel contracts across the country, boosting
their leveraging power nationwide.
“It’s a matter of survival. We can’t just fight alone,”
said Valerie Lapin, spokesperson for Unite Here, which represents the
hotel workers and has 440,000 working members nationwide.
“We have to respond to the consolidation of hotel ownership,”
Lapin adds. “Decisions are being made at a corporate level outside
the city. These companies have tremendous power. The only way to level
that is to work with other locals around the country.”
Lapin said that in about 30 cities across the nation, locals were doing
a variety of activities, such as leafleting, to show their support for
San Francisco.
As in San Francisco, workers in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, have
been in negotiations with hotel management for months. They are trying
to protect their health benefits, pensions, wage hikes, workloads and
the right to an agreement that expires or can be reopened in 2006. Union
leaders say a two-year contract would begin to restore a balance of
power with the national hotel companies. They have the support of Mayor
Gavin Newsom, going against the San Francisco hotels that helped elect
him.
Those hotels, meanwhile, are pushing for a five-year contract.
Cornell Fowler, who represents the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group
(SFMEG) — the bargaining unit for 14 of San Francisco’s leading
hotels — said rank-and-file could care less about the two-year
sticking point.
Fowler said that negotiating a two-year contract would be disastrous
for the city because conventions are planned two years in advance.
“If we agree to a two-year contract, no way would any conventions
come to San Francisco. Planners would not come here after what they’ve
seen happens during a strike,” Fowler said.
In Atlantic City, 10,000 Unite Here workers are walking the picket line
at seven casinos. They are looking to get a contract expiration date
of 2007 to merge with the expiration contract date for Las Vegas workers.
Again, the strategy is about power through numbers.
Union leaders say they learned much through last year’s grocery
strike in California. Although the strike was effective, “it wasn’t
enough,” said Unite Here’s Lapin. In that case, some 70,000
workers went on strike. Although there was much community support, information
about the strike wasn’t broad-based.
For instance, in the Bay Area, few people were aware of the Southern
California strike.
“People were still shopping in Bay Area grocery stores. When they
found out about that strike, they honored it here but by that time,
it was too late,” Lapin said.
As a result, the workers didn’t have the power or the pull to seriously
bring store negotiators to the table.
The hotels stringently try to dissuade workers that their union is acting
in their best interest. “I am very disappointed to tell you,”
writes the hotel representative, “that because of your union’s
continued insistence on a two-year deal, the San Francisco Multi-Employer
Group will not agree to end this lockout.”
Her union said they might not return to work until January, Estradita
Gayoso said. “We don’t know yet.”
Source: El Tecolote
Workers left sterile by pesticide seek
justice
By Stephen Leahy
Brooklyn, Canada, Nov 12 (Tierramérica) -- A new lawsuit
filed by thousands of Costa Rican banana workers against US companies
is the latest in a so-far unsuccessful series of claims against the
use of Nemagon, a pesticide widely associated with sterility and cancer.
The suit was filed against Shell Chemical Co. and Dow Chemical, and
the banana giants Dole Food Co., Chiquita Brands International Inc.,
and Fresh Del Monte Produce Co. last month.
Shell Chemical is a subsidiary of Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Fresh
Del Monte is owned by the Palestinian family Abu Ghazaleh. The other
companies are US owned.
The claim accuses the companies of continuing to use dibromochloropropane
(DBCP), sold under the brand names Nemagon or Fumazone, on banana plantations
in Central America after it was banned in the US in 1979.
DBCP is believed to cause sterility, testicular atrophy, miscarriages,
birth defects, liver damage and cancer when inhaled or absorbed by the
skin, according to the lawsuit filed by Los Angeles attorneys Walter
Lack and Tom Girardi.
The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports that data
collected on workers involved in the manufacture of DBCP showed the
chemical can cause sterility, and that this finding is backed by studies
in animals.
Acting on behalf of Costa Rican banana plantation workers, the lawyers
are asking for damages for what they describe as “wanton and reckless
acts... and outrageous and malicious conduct.’’
If the plaintiffs are successful, it will be the first time that companies
which persisted in using DBCP are punished.
Although the US Environmental Protection Agency discovered DBCP could
lead to cancer and sterility and severely restricted its use in 1977,
it was widely used throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, Western
Africa, and the Philippines until the early to mid-1980s.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, and lawsuits totalling billions of
dollars, no US court has ever ordered one of these companies to pay
compensation to the workers, says Erica Rosenthal of Earthjustice, a
US-based non-profit public interest law firm.
“There is no debate about the hazards of DBCP, especially the fact
that it can make males sterile,’’ she told Tierramérica.
“The chemical manufacturers knew in the 1960s it would have this
effect and speculated that DBCP could be a male contraceptive,”
said Rosenthal, who has advocated for banana workers on this issue for
14 years.
When contacted, plaintiff lawyer Lack refused to comment on the case
and would not allow Tierramérica to talk to his clients.
A spokesperson from Dow said the firm could not comment on the specific
allegations but said Dow did not sell DBCP after it was banned in 1979.
A Dole representative did not respond to the written questions submitted
by Tierramérica.
This is just the most recent of many DBCP-related lawsuits banana workers
filed against these companies during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
But in the end, none has been successful.
In 2001, Nicaraguan courts ordered Shell, Dole, and Dow to pay $489
million to 500 male banana workers made sterile by DBCP. But the companies
refused to pay and, led by Dole, they counter-sued the claimants for
fraud and asked for $17 billion in damages.
When workers pursued enforcement of the 2001 Nicaraguan court judgement
this year, the US Federal Court refused to take the case, says Kathy
Hoyt, co-coordinator of the Nicaragua Network, a US-based non-governmental
organisation.
“That was their last hope for compensation,’’ said the
activist.
For the most part, US judges have argued that their courts are not the
appropriate arena for trying these cases, and only four percent of the
rejected cases are re-filed in other countries.
Under the civil codes of most Latin American countries, plaintiffs’
rights are weaker, there are fewer jury trials and they lack strong
discovery rules, Hoyt says. Lawyers are expensive, and not limited to
collecting their fees only if they win the case, as is common in US
litigation.
“A worker making $80 a month can’t afford to pay a lawyer
to file a lawsuit. Access to justice for most workers is nearly non-existent.’’
Some of the cases rejected in the United States were heard in other
countries, but there the accused corporations wield strong influence
or no longer hold seizable assets, she said.
But that hasn’t stopped the workers from trying. In March, a Nicaraguan
court ordered Shell Chemical, Dole Food, and Standard Fruit companies
to pay a group of 81 women $82.9 million. The women had been made chronically
ill by their exposure to DBCP.
Nicaragua’s Attorney General Víctor Talavera has been reported
as saying his government will follow up on cases now in US courts, but
believes negotiated settlement with the companies is the only way workers
will see substantial compensation.
A fight in US courts would take years and be very expensive, he said.
Despite the long odds of winning, yet another group of Nicaraguan workers
filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles earlier this year.
Banana companies such as Dole and Chiquita have made significant advances
in improving their environmental and labour conditions in recent years,
says Steve Coates of US/Labour Education in the Americas Project, an
NGO supporting economic justice and basic rights for workers.
However, there are other companies where this is not the case and there
are concerns about other pesticides, he said.
“We talk to workers all the time who say they have to duck under
the banana plants while planes fly overhead spraying the crop,’’
Coates said in a Tierramérica interview.
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