Chicago hotel strike pits workers against Democrats’ billionaire candidate for governor
By Jerry White
12 September 2018
The strike by over 5,000 Chicago hotel workers spread to 26 locations Tuesday, as hundreds of workers walked off the job at the Cambria Chicago Magnificent Mile hotel, just north of downtown. Thousands of housekeepers, bellhops, servers, cooks and other hospitality workers walked out across the city last Friday to demand increased wages, year-round health benefits and reduced workloads.
Labor agreements covering 6,000 members of the UNITE HERE in Chicago expired on August 31, along with thousands of others at major hotels across the country. On Tuesday, hotel workers in Hawaii voted by 95 percent to approve strike action at six Marriott-operated hotels in Honolulu and on Maui. Hospitality workers at Marriott, which became the world’s largest hotel chain after its $13 billion acquisition of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, will take strike votes today in Boston, September 13 in San Francisco and San Jose, and September 14 in Seattle.
The strikes pit some of the most exploited sections of the working class, including large numbers of Latin American and Asian immigrant workers earning near poverty wages, against some of the most powerful and politically connected multinational businesses. This includes Marriott—which owns 30 brands and more than 5,800 properties in more than 110 countries—and Hyatt Hotels Corporation, which has 777 properties in 54 countries.
Chicago hotels raked in more than $2 billion in revenue in 2017, with more than 55 million tourists visiting the city. Occupancy at the downtown hotels—where a stay in a five-star room can go for anywhere between $440 and $1,500 a night—reached 90 percent.
In addition to Marriott properties, the strikers are picketing two out of three of the hotels owned by Hyatt. This is particularly significant since the hotel chain is owned by the Chicago-based Pritzker family, ranked by Forbes as America’s seventh richest family, with a net worth of $29 billion. In addition to their vast wealth—the family also owns TransUnion credit bureau, Braniff airlines, McCall’s magazine, and the Royal Caribbean cruise line—the Pritzkers are a prominent fixture in the Democratic Party machine politics in Chicago and throughout the US.
Hyatt Chairman and CEO Thomas Pritzker, whose net worth is $4.2 billion, is the former chairman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a major think tank for US imperialism, and Northwest America Western Asia Holdings. The latter is an investment firm Pritzker founded with a former Pentagon official in 2011 to exploit profit opportunities in Iraq’s oil and shipping industries under the US occupation.
Penny Pritzker, one of the heirs to the Hyatt
fortune with a net worth of $2.5 billion, was
picked by President Obama as US Secretary
of Commerce. Another heir, JB Pritzker, a
venture capitalist with a net worth of $3.3
billion, was the national co-chair of the Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign in 2008. He is
the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor
of Illinois in the November elections.
fortune with a net worth of $2.5 billion, was
picked by President Obama as US Secretary
of Commerce. Another heir, JB Pritzker, a
venture capitalist with a net worth of $3.3
billion, was the national co-chair of the Hillary
Clinton presidential campaign in 2008. He is
the Democratic Party’s candidate for governor
of Illinois in the November elections.
Given the candidate’s family connections to Hyatt, a local ABC reporter asked the Pritzker for Governor campaign for its comments on the ongoing strike. “JB stands with the labor movement across Illinois in the fight for better wages, benefits, and working conditions,” the campaign cynically declared.
The 1995 retirement of Jay Pritzker, co-founder and president of Hyatt, led to a nasty feud over the company’s assets, leading several family members, including JB, to reportedly stay away from management control. Nevertheless, all the Pritzkers, including the Democratic candidate for Illinois, have large holdings in the company and profit handsomely from the exploitation of hotel workers in Chicago and around the world.
While restaurant and cocktail servers at the Chicago Hyatt Regency can make as little as $9 an hour and a housekeeper as little as $14 an hour, the company spent nearly $600 million in July on a stock buyback program to drive up the value of its shares for Hyatt’s richest investors, including the Pritzker clan. According to its second quarter financial statement, “The Company expects to return approximately $800 million to shareholders, compared to a previous expectation of at least $700 million, through a combination of share repurchases and cash dividends on its common stock.”
The Pritzker family has waged a long and
bitter war against hotel workers. During
repeated strikes between 2009 and 2015,
hotel workers were subjected to harassment
and intimidation.
bitter war against hotel workers. During
repeated strikes between 2009 and 2015,
hotel workers were subjected to harassment
and intimidation.
The company has been found repeatedly in violation of restrictions on contracting out for cheaper labor. In January, the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint because Hyatt refused to respond to multiple accusations that it was using facial recognition technology, in violation of state law, to spy on hotel workers at the Chicago Hyatt Regency.
In the summer of 2013, Hyatt turned heat lamps, usually used to warm guests in the winter time, on striking workers to break up a picket line. “They put the heat lamps on us, like we were nothing,” Linda Long, a worker at the Hyatt kitchen, told the local media. “If the heat didn’t kill us, the heat lamps would.”
Nearly 30 unions have backed Pritzker’s election campaign, including the Chicago Federation of Labor, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Illinois Federation of Teachers. If the UNITE HERE union has not officially endorsed the billionaire candidate’s campaign bid, it’s only because this would further discredit the union in the eyes of workers.
UNITE HERE is deeply embedded in the Democratic Party and in 2015 endorsed the reelection campaign of the widely hated Mayor Rahm Emanuel, known among workers as “Mayor 1 Percent” for defending the city’s corporate and financial elite while shutting public schools, overseeing the decay of neighborhoods and social services and covering up the brutality of the notorious Chicago Police Department.
There is little doubt that behind the scenes UNITE HERE and the unions are working diligently with the Democrats to reach a rotten deal and rapidly shut down the strike. This is what happened in 2015, when, after nearly six-years of impotent strikes, protests and boycotts, UNITE HERE signed an agreement with Hyatt that maintained poverty level wages and dangerous working conditions but made it easier for the union to gain access to workers in non-union locations and collect union dues.
In the run up to the November mid-term elections, the working class is coming into increasingly direct conflict with the Democratic Party, as well as the Trump administration. Earlier this year, teachers rebelled against the unions and waged a series of statewide walkouts in West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona, where the grip of the Democratic Party and the unions is weak.
As school began this month, teachers in the state of Washington—which is run by a Democratic governor and Democratic controlled state legislature—have waged as series of strikes after years in which teacher salaries and public education have been undermined by Democratic-backed tax cuts to corporations like Boeing and Amazon. Teachers in Democratic-controlled Los Angeles have voted by 98 percent to strike.
After decades of deindustrialization and wage-cutting, aided and abetted by the unions, popular anger over social inequality in Chicago and around the country is reaching a boiling point. The walkout by hotel workers and the growing number of strikes in the US, which itself is part of the escalation of class conflict around the world, points to the mood of militancy and anti-capitalist sentiment that is growing among workers and youth.
Workers cannot allow their struggles to be strangled by the unions, which are falsely claiming the election of Democrats in November will improve conditions. Instead hotel workers in Chicago should form independent rank-and-file strike committees to organize mass picketing against the hotel corporations’ strikebreaking operations and appeal for common action from broader sections of workers engaged in similar struggles, including teachers, steelworkers at US Steel and ArcelorMittal, UPS, US Postal Service and Amazon workers.
In every factory and workplace, similar committees, independent of the unions and both big business parties, should be elected to prepare and organize a general strike, which will bring workers into conflict with the Democratic and Republican parties and the entire capitalist system.
Richest one percent controls nearly half
of global wealth
"This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events." CATHERINE SELLERS
"This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events." CATHERINE SELLERS
OBAMA-CLINTONomics and the final death of the American middle-class
"Obama expanded the Wall Street bailout, handing trillions of dollars to the criminals who wrecked the economy. He then utilized the financial meltdown to restructure the auto industry on the basis of brutal pay cuts, setting a precedent for the transformation of the US into a low-wage economy."
"In the midst of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the administration starved state and city governments of resources, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of education and public-sector jobs and the gutting of workers’ pensions. Obama’s Affordable Care Act set in motion the dismantling of employer-paid health insurance and massive cuts in the Medicare insurance system for the elderly."
"Obama expanded the Wall Street bailout, handing trillions of dollars to the criminals who wrecked the economy. He then utilized the financial meltdown to restructure the auto industry on the basis of brutal pay cuts, setting a precedent for the transformation of the US into a low-wage economy."
OPEN BORDERS AND NON-ENFORCEMENT OF LAWS PROHIBITING THE EMPLOYMENT OF ILLEGALS IS NOT BY ACCIDENT, BUT BY DEVICE. KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED KEEPS ALL POLITICIAN'S CRONIES
CONTENTED AND GENER$OU$!
Obama’s Secret Destruction of Our Immigration System
By Arnold Ahlert
Canada Free Press, November 4, 2015
A newly-leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) reveals the Obama administration is seeking to sidestep a
federal court injunction that suspended portions of the president’s
amnesty-based initiatives known as Deferred Action for Parents of
Americans (DAPA) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA). In short, Obama is determined to impose his
transformational agenda on the nation by any means necessary.
According to the Hill, the document outlining the administration’s
attempt to thumb its nose at the rule of law was prepared at a DHS
“Regulations Retreat” last June, four months after a preliminary
injunction was initially imposed by Texas Judge Andrew Hanen
and subsequently left in place by a three-judge panel of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit’s
final ruling on that injunction, either confirming or reversing it, is
expected to occur in a matter of days.Apparently the Obama
administration couldn’t care less.
http://canadafreepress.com/article/76535
"The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/11/obamas-crony-capitalism-obama-was.html
US poverty rate and income growth stagnated in
2014
By Niles Williamson
Obama’s Secret Destruction of Our Immigration System
By Arnold Ahlert
Canada Free Press, November 4, 2015
A newly-leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) reveals the Obama administration is seeking to sidestep a
federal court injunction that suspended portions of the president’s
amnesty-based initiatives known as Deferred Action for Parents of
Americans (DAPA) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
(DACA). In short, Obama is determined to impose his
transformational agenda on the nation by any means necessary.
According to the Hill, the document outlining the administration’s
attempt to thumb its nose at the rule of law was prepared at a DHS
“Regulations Retreat” last June, four months after a preliminary
injunction was initially imposed by Texas Judge Andrew Hanen
and subsequently left in place by a three-judge panel of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit’s
final ruling on that injunction, either confirming or reversing it, is
expected to occur in a matter of days.Apparently the Obama
administration couldn’t care less.
http://canadafreepress.com/article/76535
"The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs."
OBAMANOMICS:
How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street
Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses…and Muslim
Dictators
US poverty rate and income growth stagnated in
2014
By Niles Williamson
19 September 2015
The US Census Bureau released its annual income and poverty report this week which showed that median household income and the national poverty rate held steady between 2013 and 2014.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/09/millions-of-jobs-for-illegals-along.html
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/09/millions-of-jobs-for-illegals-along.html
The report found that 14.8 percent of the country’s population lived in poverty in 2014, statistically unchanged from a year prior. Blacks had the highest poverty rate in 2014 at 26.2 percent, which was a one percentage point increase over 2013. Among children and teenagers under the age of 18, approximately 15.5 million, or 21.1 percent, lived in poverty.
OBAMA-CLINTONomics: Their cronies loot…
“This is Obama’s new “middle class,” working
for half the wages of their grandparents and
barely keeping one step out of a homeless shelter.”
"Corporate profits are at their highest share of GDP since World War II, while the portion of national economic output going to labor has fallen to the lowest postwar level."
This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
Inequality
heights last seen in the 1920s. Most of the income growth has gone
to a small fraction of the population, the ultra-rich elites, while real
wages for the bottom 90 percent has been stagnant since the 1980s. The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation.
Obama set to defy federal court on amnesty
Except now there are plans afoot to change the regulations
Ian Smith of the Immigration Reform Law Institute:
The internal memo reveals four options of varying expansiveness,
with option 1 providing EADs to “all individuals living in the
United States”, including illegal aliens, visa-overstayers, and H-1B
guest-workers, while option 4 provides EADsonly to those on
certain unexpired non-immigrant visas. Giving EADs to any of the
covered individuals, however, is in direct violation of Congress’s
Immigration & Nationality Act and works to dramatically subvert
our carefully wrought visa system.
Obama to Wannabe Illegals: Do as I Say, Not as I Do
By Mark Krikorian
CIS Blog, October 30, 2015
http://cis.org/krikorian/obama-wannabe-illegals-do-i-say-not-i-do
In response the surge of Central Americans sneaking into Texas in the summer of 2014, the Obama administration launched an ad campaign in the sending countries earlier this year to stem the flow. The radio and TV spots assert that "there are no permits for the people trying to cross the border without papers" and promise "the immediate deportation of those trying to cross the border without documents."
None of it is true. There are permits for illegal-alien minors and families. Formally known as Notices to Appear but known colloquially in Spanish as permisos, they require the aliens to present themselves to immigration authorities by a certain date, until which they have temporary legal status. That gives them time enough to travel to join their relatives and disappear into the existing illegal population. And disappear they do, since, despite the tough promises, virtually none of them are deported, immediately or otherwise.
OBAMA-CLINTONomics: MELTDOWN!
Richest one percent controls nearly half
of global wealth
In 2009, the total net worth of the Forbes 400 was $1.27
trillion. Today, nearly six years into the so-called economic
“recovery” fostered by the Obama administration, the
wealthiest Americans have nearly doubled their hoard. The
total wealth of the richest 400 Americans managed to reach
new heights even while financial markets have been roiled by
tumultuous swings.
DEATH OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
November 3, 2015
The Causes of Income
Inequality
Income inequality has risen during the last several decades to
heights last seen in the 1920s. Most of the income growth has gone
to a small fraction of the population, the ultra-rich elites, while real
wages for the bottom 90 percent has been stagnant since the 1980s. The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation.
November 3, 2015
Obama set to defy federal court on amnesty
implementing its immigration reform proposals.
This time, his administration is looking to also defy a federal court
to achieve it.
A judge sitting on the 5th Circuit in Texas issued an injunction last
June against the administration's regulatory plans to legalize
millions of aliens in the U.S. illegally. The injunction was upheld
by a federal appeals court in Louisiana, and the president's plan is
now stalled while the administration works through the federal
court system.
Except now there are plans afoot to change the regulations
pertaining to green cards that would accomplish almost everything
the president can't get from Congress or the courts. A leaked memo
from DHS outlines four plans the administration is considering.
Ian Smith of the Immigration Reform Law Institute:
with option 1 providing EADs to “all individuals living in the
United States”, including illegal aliens, visa-overstayers, and H-1B
guest-workers, while option 4 provides EADsonly to those on
certain unexpired non-immigrant visas. Giving EADs to any of the
covered individuals, however, is in direct violation of Congress’s
Immigration & Nationality Act and works to dramatically subvert
our carefully wrought visa system.
Obama to Wannabe Illegals: Do as I Say, Not as I Do
By Mark Krikorian
CIS Blog, October 30, 2015
http://cis.org/krikorian/obama-wannabe-illegals-do-i-say-not-i-do
In response the surge of Central Americans sneaking into Texas in the summer of 2014, the Obama administration launched an ad campaign in the sending countries earlier this year to stem the flow. The radio and TV spots assert that "there are no permits for the people trying to cross the border without papers" and promise "the immediate deportation of those trying to cross the border without documents."
None of it is true. There are permits for illegal-alien minors and families. Formally known as Notices to Appear but known colloquially in Spanish as permisos, they require the aliens to present themselves to immigration authorities by a certain date, until which they have temporary legal status. That gives them time enough to travel to join their relatives and disappear into the existing illegal population. And disappear they do, since, despite the tough promises, virtually none of them are deported, immediately or otherwise.
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