1980 San Francisco hotel strike

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1980 San Francisco hotel strike

Part of Labor Unions

Date

July 17, 1980 – August 15, 1980
(44 years ago)

Parties

Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 2

San Francisco Hotel Employers Association

Units involved

6,000 workers

The 1980 San Francisco hotel strike was labor dispute between 6,000 members of Local 2 the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union and the Hotel Employers Association in the San Francisco Bay Area. The strike occurred began on July 17, 1980 and was characterized by massive picket lines at luxury hotels during the peak of the tourist season. Local 2 was the largest union of the city and the strike was widely supported by the Bay Area AFL-CIO council, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. ^[1] San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein was also involved in ending the strike.

Local 2 was widely known as a militant union. Strikers were overwhelmingly African-American, Asian-American, and Hispanic women and they were supported by women's labor groups such as Union W.A.G.E.. In late July, the president of HERE became involved in negotiations in an attempt to end the strike.^[2] During the strike eight members of the Communist Workers' Party entered Feinstein's outer office and shouted threats and obscenities in which they accused her of being behind the hotel strike and demanded that she send a message to President Carter at the Democratic National Convention.^[3] The strike ended on August 15, with a 67 page contract being written between the union leaders, hotels, and Feinstein. The international union, not the employers, had to cover the $250,000 worth of retroactive payments to employees who went on strike.^[4]

In 2004, a similar strike recalled memories of the 1980 dispute.^[5]

References

^ Damu, Jean (1981). "Economic Repression: The San Francisco Hotel Workers Strike". The Black Scholar. 12 (1): 68–71. ISSN 0006-4246.
^ "Talks Continuing in Hotel Strike". The New York Times. 26 July 1980.
^ "Radical ousted". The Desert Sun. August 8, 1980. p. 3. Archived from the original on December 9, 2020. Retrieved December 12, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
^ "Hotel workers back on jobs". The Modesto Bee. August 16, 1980. p. 13. Archived from the original on December 9, 2020. Retrieved December 12, 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
^ Abate, Tommie (October 1, 2004). "Strife mirrors earlier strike / Hotel workers walked out in 1980 for four weeks".

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