Contributor: Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer

and Hilton San Francisco Union Square today announced a tentative agreement to end an eighteen month labor dispute in San Francisco. The settlement comes as similar agreements were reached in Chicago and Honolulu, and signals a major breakthrough in citywide hotel negotiations.

The contract settlement – which is subject to a ratification vote this Friday – was reached during negotiations last Thursday, and was finalized over the weekend. It is a four-year agreement, back to August 2009 and forward to August 2013. It provides for continued, fully-paid health benefits, pension improvements, $2.00 in total wage increases, and workload reductions. 

With this settlement, UNITE HERE has called an end to the boycott of the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and is encouraging customers to book events at this property.

Legal Fund protects members from evictions and foreclosures and facilitates legal immigration (citizenship, work permits and family reunification).

Hyatt has asked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to stop UNITE HERE Local 2 from reallocating employer contributions to the hotel workers’ Legal Fund – a fund that helps workers’ families navigate immigration laws, fight foreclosures, and deal with other difficult situations. Even though this change has no financial impact whatsoever on employers, and even though without this reallocation of funds workers’ might face cuts in legal assistance, Hyatt is trying to block the move in order to put pressure on workers to sign a concessionary contract.

at the Hilton Union Square in downtown San Francisco. More than 16 months after union hotel contracts expired, the Blackstone Group, which owns the hotel, has yet to propose a contract that the hotel workers, who earn an average of $30,000 a year, can afford.

Industry analysts and Blackstone itself expect very jolly holiday seasons for years to come. San Francisco hotel workers continue to demand an explanation as to why Blackstone is seeking to lay off workers, freeze pensions, shift the burden of rising health care costs onto hotel workers and lock working families into a permanent recession.