Thousands of San Francisco hotel workers have either gone or strike or are locked out. Hotel workers in Los Angeles and Washington D.C. are also facing strike action. These hotel workers who do the most difficult jobs from room cleaners to cooks to front desk staff. They are fighting to protect their healthcare, their pensions, wages and the right to have their contracts expire when other hotel contracts expire around the country expire. Most of these workers are Latino, Asian and Black and they are barely making ends meet. They need the support of every working person in America. A defeat for hotel workers will threaten the healthcare benefits of all workers union and non-union.

Hotel bosses representing the Hilton, Hyatt, Holiday Inn and Sheraton and other chains are flying in hundreds of strikebreakers from around the country to break the San Francisco strike. These global multi-nationals which have profits of billions are seeking to make hotel workers pay the cost of the healthcare crisis and to prevent the workers from having a unified contract expiration date that would allow them to strike together. This attack on the right of workers to determine when their contracts should expire is another example of the arrogance of these billionaires who own and control the hotel industry.

The Million Worker March Committee www.millionworkermarch.org has been organized to stop this national epidemic of union busting and attacks on our healthcare, wages and pensions.

We call on all workers to support the locked out workers on the picket lines. Get your union to invite strikers to their union meeting and to adopt a hotel. We need to also mobilize for mass picketing to shut these union busters down. If you can't go to Washington D.C. you can call these union busters and let them know what you think about their tactics.

Let them know that hotel workers have the right to healthcare, decent wages and benefits.

In San Francisco the hotels on strike or those that have locked out workers are:

- Crown Plaza 

- San Francisco Hilton, 

- Grand Hyatt, 

- Holiday Inn/Civic Center Holiday Inn/Express@Wharf, 

- Holiday Inn/Fisherman¹s Wharf, 

- Hyatt Regency, 

- OMNI, 

- Palace Hotel, 

- St. Francis Hotel, 

- Mark Hopkins,


(866)655-4669 Holiday Inns
(888)625-4988 Starwood-St. Francis
(800)228-3360 Hyatt Hotels
(800)445-8667 HILTON Hotels
(800) 819-5053  Four Seasons
(800) 465-4329 Intercontinental Hotels-Mark Hopkins
(800)843-6664 Omni Hotels

(October 14, 2004) Recent endorsers include Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, Bet Power (Director/Curator, Sexual Minorities Archives, Bisexual Resource Center, Boston, MA), Federation of Revolutionary Anarchist Collectives - Great Lakes Region, Guillermo Herraiz Medel (Ecologistas en Accion, Zaragoza, Spain), Leslie Feinberg (Co-Chair Nat'l Queer Caucus, National Writers' Union/UAW Local 1981), The Shalom Center, Irish Queers (NYC), Queer People Of Color Action, LAGAI (Queer Insurrection from the SF Bay Area), Henry Millbourne (Detroit Black Gay Pride, Inc.*), Los Angeles Catholic Worker, STOP WAR! WORLD ACTION Coalition (Japan), Movimiento Ciudadano por la Vida (El Salvador), Progressive Archivists Caucus, Bloomington Peace Action Coalition, Global Resistance Network (Los Angeles), Postal Workers for Peace, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Rainforest Action Network, National Welfare Rights Union, Metro New York Health Care for All Campaign, Socialist Action & Youth for Socialist Action, Radical Women, JFK Airport CH 153 National Treasury Employees Union, DC Labor Chorus, Green Party of Alameda County, Rev. Lucius Walker of Pastors for Peace, Baltimore NAACP, Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 9410 (San Francisco telephone workers), American Federation of Teachers Local 2121, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), Teamsters National Black Caucus, Filipino Workers Association (FWA), Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA [AFL-CIO, National Executive Board]), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 535 (representing 30,000 workers), American Postal Workers Union (representing 330,000 members, endorsed at 2004), Pastors for Peace/IFCO, DNC2RNC Democracy Uprising, American Indian Movement, United For Peace & Justice, International A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and many more!

(October 18, 2004) Washington Post
by Manny Fernandez and David Nakamura, Washington Post Staff Writers

"I think we need a change," said Ronnie White, 48, a production worker at a food plant in Kansas City, Mo., who stood on the steps above the Reflecting Pool proudly wearing his black Teamsters Local 838 jacket. "We need the jobs here, not overseas."

by Ryme Katkhouda, Fred Nguyen & the dc-radio-coop
http://dc.indymedia.org/feature/display/107031/index.php

"While there wasn't a million -- or even a march -- the good news is that folks like the Anarchist workers' contingent and the IWW and the Radical Cheerleaders combined with the large militant anti-war union presence at the Memorial to keep the joint jumpin'. Not a whole lotta' shuckin' for Kerry in THIS crowd."

Monday, Oct. 18, 2004, 7 PM, EST, over 99.5 FM in New York
or streaming live at http://www.2600.com/offthehook/hot2.ram

WBAI Radio's Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report
Produced & Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash

The essential task of African-American workers as an indispensable catalyst for a working class resurgence in the United States was articulated by Black Workers for Justice in a pamphlet distributed at the Million Worker March:

"The two major parties have a 'gentleman's agreement' to refrain from making challenges that disrupt corporate rule of the electoral system and the U.S. imperialist global agenda. Undermining the democratic rights of African-Americans has been a cornerstone for undermining democracy for the larger U.S. working class.

"No matter who is elected President, the corporate agenda won’t change and Black workers will continue to be super-exploited in the economy, under siege by the police and state, victimized by poor schools, a lack of decent affordable housing and environmental racism, scapegoated in the media, disproportionately locked up in the jails and fighting and dying in the military."

(10.19.2004, 01:37 pm)
duration: 5:12 (est.) featuring: Danny Glover, Jesse Jackson , Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and others

Local Million Worker March websites maintained and initiated directly by corresponding local organizers:

http://www.lgbt4millionworkermarch.org

http://antiwar4themillionworkermarch.org

http://www.phillymwm.org/

Septmber 14, 2004, http://globalwomenstrike.net

Please join us as we continue to make history for a national mobilization of workers on Washington DC. Start organizing busses in your city if one isn't already organized. Simply sign up as a regional contact and post any local events you may be having by adding yourself on the left hand sidebar under Events or Local and national Contacts. See you in DC!

The Call for the Million Worker March states in part, "As working class people, we know more than any others the difficulties and limitations we face both in our communities and workplaces. We shall therefore be representing ourselves during this march, independent from all politicians, while putting forward to the entire country, our program for the betterment of America's majority working population." The Call was debated and produced with the full input of the entire MWM Committee of the ILWU local 10 in SF. The full text of the Call is listed at the bottom of this page.

8/18/2004 – (Orlando, FL) Today, C. Thomas Keegel, International Brotherhood of Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer announced that the IBT would be contributing a significant amount of money to the Million Worker March on Washington.  The contribution was given to Chris Silvera, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 808 and President of the Teamsters National Black Caucus during the 29th annual Conference of the Teamsters National Black Caucus in Orlando, Florida.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Please Join Us in a Million Worker March.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 10, recently passed a resolution proposing a million worker march on Washington in 2004.

Sunday, October 17, 2004 [updated from the 16th] is the date for this march. This mobilization is being proposed in response to the attacks upon working families in America and the millions of jobs lost during the Bush administration and with the complicity of Congress. The working class has not suffered such hardships since the Great Depression.

We are encouraging everyone to have the attached resolution adopted by your membership or organization. We are also asking that your organization start a Million Workers March Committee to mobilize organized/unorganized labor and our community and religious allies in your area, ultimately merging with a National Committee to be formed at a later date. Finally, we are asking for a financial contribution from your organization to be sent to the address below until a national Committee is created.

The Bush Administration and Congress's focus of placing the acquisition of capital and the quest for profits above the needs of working people is undermining the economic security of working people and the nation as a whole.

Now is the time for organized/unorganized labor, the interfaith and community organizations to show solidarity and demand that all elected officials address the needs of working people. As working class people, we know more than any others the difficulties and limitations we face both in our communities and workplaces. We shall therefore be representing ourselves during this march, independent from all politicians, while putting forward to the entire country, our program for the betterment of America's majority working population.

While we are in the early stages of planning this action, we are urging organizations to join us in making this march a reality. We need you and your organizations help. The crises we face is severe. By mobilizing and uniting organized and unorganized labor with our community and religious allies we will be able to more effectively stop the attack on working people and improve our living and working conditions

Please contact:

MILLION WORKER MARCH COMMITTEE
ILWU, Local 10
400 North Point
San Francisco, CA 94133
(415) 771-2028 Tel.
(415) 441-0610 Fax.
Email: mwm_committee@yahoo.com.

Learn why we need a Million Worker March.
Listen to Clarence Thomas of ILWU Local 10 and Ralph Schoenman of Pacifica Radio explain in detail the causes for and benefits of a Million Worker march on Washington. This interview was broadcast on KPFA - Guns and Butter with host Bonnie Faulkner:

Click here to listen