Essay by David Bacon

Three weeks on the picket line will either weaken a strike or make it stronger. But workers at the Marriott hotels in eight cities around the US show no signs of wanting to go back to work anytime soon, at least not without resolving the reasons why they went on strike to begin with. Instead, the noise on the picket line is getting louder. Workers bang on pots, drums — even old folding chairs — making a racket loud enough to penetrate thick walls and double-paned windows. As a result, many hotel guests not dissuaded by their initial encounters with picketing workers are giving up and leaving.

“Over 20 guests have told me they’re checking out and moving to the Waterfront Hotel,” said Kenneth Walker, the veteran head doorman at the Marriott City Center Hotel in Oakland, California. The Waterfront Hotel, just a dozen blocks down Broadway, is not on strike.

It’s not just happening in Oakland. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Roland Li reports that organizers of the 2018 ComNet conference (a network of foundations and non-profits discussing better communications), which normally draws 1,000 attendees, moved their events out of the struck St. Francis Hotel. The St. Francis used to be a Westin property, but became part of the 700-hotel Marriott empire when Westin was bought out by what is now the world’s largest hotel chain.

Other organizations pulling out of commitments at the Bay Area Marriotts include the Human Rights Campaign, the Shanti Project, the Chicana Latina Foundation and Bay Area Wilderness Training. In response, a huge wave of robocalls is hitting thousands of people in the region, trying to lure them into the Marriotts with offers of special deals.

However, not everyone is avoiding the hotels where workers are on strike. For instance, in Boston, the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers did not cancel hotel reservations for their baseball teams. Instead, ballplayers, themselves members of a union, snuck into the rear entrances of struck hotels as workers yelled questions to them about their apparent lack of solidarity.

Nevertheless, the picket lines and the creative tactics used by the workers and their unions have largely been the reasons hotel customers have turned away. The impact of housekeepers walking picket lines, instead of making beds, has been hard for the company to deny. According to Tonya Lee, a PBX(AYS) operator on the hotel telephone switchboard for the Oakland Marriott for 28 years, “If our manager had to clean seven rooms, he couldn’t do it. Right now he just strips the bed, which is the easy part. He doesn’t then make it or do what comes next. The managers have told me that the strike has made them respect what we just do every day.”

That’s also how Walker describes his experience as a member of the negotiating committee of his union, Unite Here Local 2850. “We’re going to win,” he said. “I feel the people across the table have learned to respect us.”

To get Marriott’s directors to pay attention to the union’s demands, the picket lines have been augmented by street actions and marches. Forty-one hotel strikers and supporters were arrested on October 12 for sitting on Fourth Street in front of Marriott’s San Francisco flagship, the Marquis. In Oakland, on the coordinated national day of marches a week later, hundreds of strikers and supporters took over the intersection of 10th Street and Broadway, outside the hotel entrance. As the police stood without intervening, children painted the strike’s slogan in huge letters on the asphalt: “One Job Should be Enough.”

Workers want protection from the increased use of automated equipment for doing jobs from checking in guests to mixing cocktails. The hotel chain has implemented a “green hotel” program, encouraging guests on cards left in the rooms not to ask for new linen and towels. Although it sounds like an environmentally friendly idea, workers accuse the hotels of using it to reduce the need for housekeepers, speeding up the work and putting their jobs in danger. Instead, the union seeks to reduce a punishing workload, especially for the housekeepers who clean the rooms and make the beds.

While Unite Here locals in each city holds bargaining talks for the hotels located there, the strike has coordinated actions by more than 7,700 workers in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, San Diego, Detroit, Boston, Maui and Honolulu. Seattle Marriott workers have also voted to authorize a strike.

At some hotels, workers are veterans of strikes like this. In 2004, a strike by Local 2 in San Francisco became a lockout by the city’s swankiest establishments. The struck corporations tried to force workers to return under their terms by ending their health coverage. Even after the union defeated the lockout and the workers returned without a contract, hotels refused to deduct workers’ dues payments, thinking this would force the union to agree to concessions. Instead, for two years, the workers paid their dues voluntarily, and at the end, won agreement on the contract they sought.

Since then, what was once a network of large hotels and the companies managing them has become much more of a monopoly. Marriott owns six hotels in San Francisco where workers are striking. At two non-union ones — Airport Marriott Waterfront near the airport and the downtown JW Marriott — workers have declared their open support for joining Unite Here Local 2. They are demanding that managers agree to a fair process for recognizing the union.

Local 2’s strategy, helping workers organize in the middle of a strike, contradicts accepted wisdom among some organizers, who fear managers will use strike threats to discourage workers from union support. Local 2 organizers say their experience is the opposite — that the strike shows that the union is willing and able to fight for improvements against their employer.

In Oakland, Marriott workers are experiencing their first strike. At the beginning, they were unsure if the rest of the workers would support them, even though the strike vote was 98 percent in favor. “We weren’t really prepared for this on the first day,” said Tony Scott, a bellman for 35 years. Lee adds, “I came to work on Friday [October] 5th, and when it was time, I went in and told my coworkers to come out. I wasn’t sure they would. When they all did, I felt I was 10 feet tall.”

Strikes are an education in power, and its lessons haven’t been lost on the picket lines. “Numbers are always important,” Walker explains. “Marriott has used its numbers — how much money they make and how many hotels they own. Now we’re using our numbers to show them they can’t do it without us.”

“This is my first time being on strike, and I see the union is a very powerful force if we stick together,” said Scott. “We have to stand for something. I’ll stay on the line until this is over.”

The number of migrants traveling through Mexico could soon reach 10,000

by Mexico News Daily

A third caravan of migrants is expected to leave Central America within the next week, which could bring the total number of people escaping poverty and violence by making the northward trek to nearly 10,000.

The third wave, believed to have been inspired by the caravan now traveling through Chiapas, is scheduled to leave El Salvador on October 28 and cross the border into via Tecún Umán, Guatemala, according to one report.

Organized on a Facebook group called El Salvador Emigrates for a Better Future, the caravan’s communications on social media are being monitored by the United States Department of Homeland Security, NBC News reported after obtaining an internal government report. That document indicated the departure date would be October 31, and that so far the migrants were largely families traveling with children.

The first and largest caravan entered Mexico via Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, last Friday and according to the United Nations is composed of more than 7,000 people. Today it is en route to Mapastepec, Chiapas.

A second caravan of about 2,500 people from Honduras that is currently in Guatemala has divided into two smaller groups.

Guatemala police said one group of about 1,500 people is en route to Tecún Umán while the other group of about 1,000 is planning to cross into Mexico at El Ceibo, Tabasco. Local media reported that the second group’s numbers have been augmented by migrants in the Honduras caravan who were deported from Mexico last week.

“Several units of the police are accompanying the caravan for security reasons,” said police spokesman Pablo Castillo. He also explained that military personnel and police attempted unsuccessfully to stop the advance of the group on Monday.

The Guatemala government said it was adopting measures to stop the entry of more migrants from Honduras and El Salvador into its territory, although attempts by both Guatemala and Mexico to halt the flow have failed.

In El Salvador, the government has taken a different stance. President Salvador Sánchez Cerén expressed support yesterday for the first caravan of migrants and criticized the position of U.S. President Donald Trump despite the latter’s announcement that he would cut aid to El Salvador and other Central American countries for not preventing the migrants from leaving.

“For us, to migrate is a human right so the rights of migrants have to be protected; we are totally opposed to the policy of Donald Trump,” he said.

Emigration from El Salvador has contributed to the development of the U.S. and helped the North American economy, Sánchez continued.

Trump has claimed that there are “Maras,” or members of the criminal gang Mara Salvatrucha, among the migrants, although the gang originated in Los Angeles, California. However, most were originally from El Salvador.

Source: El Universal (sp), NBC News (en), Infobae (sp)

UN warns some migrants are in danger should they be deported
Refugee agency says they are fleeing ‘real danger’ back home

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has warned that the migrant caravan currently traveling through Mexico is likely to include people fleeing “real danger” in their countries of origin.

UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards told a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, today that “in any situation like this it is essential that people have the chance to request asylum and have their international protection needs properly assessed, before any decision on return/deportation is made.”

The federal government last week warned members of the caravan, made up mainly of Hondurans, that if they enter Mexico illegally, they will be detained and deported.

However, after attempts to prevent the caravan from entering Mexico on Sunday proved futile, the migrants have walked and/or traveled on the back of trucks or in other vehicles through Chiapas unimpeded.

The government invited the UNHCR to help attend to the migrant caravan, whose numbers have been estimated as high as 7,000 people.

Most of the migrants don’t have visas and haven’t formally requested asylum with the National Immigration Institute (INM).

Around 200 migrants remain camped out on the bridge in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, on the border between Guatemala and Mexico waiting to enter Mexico legally, the newspaper Milenio reported.

Edwards said that as of yesterday there were 45 UNHCR staff in Tapachula, Chiapas, and that others are en route.

“We are going to offer employment, work for Central American migrants,” said the president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador

by Jorge Monroy

“We are going to offer employment, work for Central American migrants,” said the president-elect, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, reiterating that in order to reduce the migratory phenomenon, it is necessary to create welfare conditions.

At a press conference in Tamaulipas, after meeting with Governor Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, Lopez Obrador was questioned about whether the Mexican government should allow the passage of the caravan of migrants from Honduras. In response, Obrador said that migrants should be seen beyond the free passage.

He reiterated that one of the solutions is that the president of the United States, Donald Trump, accept the plan that he proposed to generate development in Mexico and the Central American region.

“It has to do with the same, we are asking the government of the United States, the government of Canada, the implementation of a development plan in Mexico and in the Central American countries, we are making a proposal for cooperation for development. The one who leaves his town does it out of necessity, not for pleasure, and we want the migration to be optional, not compulsory, and for people to work, be happy where they were born, where their relatives are to temper the migratory phenomenon, they have to take care of the causes; there must be investment to generate employment, improve living conditions, work in Central America and in our country; I explained this to President Donald Trump; He will accept our proposal, is carrying out a bilateral consultation process, we have information about what is happening in Central America and our position is to face the migratory phenomenon with development, with work, with well-being in Central America and in the country ” he commented.

But should the caravan be allowed in? -She was asked.

“There are options, there are alternatives. It’s not just about that (letting the caravan go by), it’s about giving options, giving alternatives, that those who leave their villages have job opportunities, we in Mexico, from December 1, we will offer employment I work with Central American migrants, that is a plan that we have; that who wants to work in our country, will have support, will have a work visa, we are seeing that. It is not dealing with the issue only with deportations or with measures of force, but by giving options, alternatives. This plan will be announced as of December 1, and we are looking for joint support, and progress is being made. In the last call I had with President Donald Trump, we celebrated the signing of the free trade agreement with the three countries, a trilateral agreement, and I told him that the second step is the development plan that includes Central America to promote productive activities , create jobs, and in this way confront the migratory phenomenon, not with deportations, not with measures of force, but giving people who leave their villages looking for work, “he said.

López Obrador said that the migratory phenomenon must be approached with respect to human rights and giving work options to those who are forced to leave their villages.

“The plan is that nobody is forced to emigrate, that’s the ideal, and if they already make the decision to leave their villages, they have options in Mexico. The plan of our development are like curtains to give job opportunities, all the south will have possibilities of occupation, of employment, for thousands of workers, because we will plant in the south-southeast 1 million hectares of timber trees , 400,000 jobs will be created, the Mayan train will be built, it is an investment of 8,000 million dollars, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec will be developed, that is another curtain. What results from the consultation on the airport in Mexico City will involve investment that will greatly strengthen industrial development in the Bajío. Here in the north there will be a free zone from Matamoros to Tijuana, taxes will go down from 16 to 8 percent VAT, to 20 percent the ISR, will increase the minimum wage to double in the border area, then, they are opportunities so that nobody is forced to leave the country, “he said.

In another related news in Mexico under Peña Nieto administration

Mexico to migrants: you will be deported if you do not have documentation
As many as 4,000 migrants are believed to be heading for Mexico’s southern border

The federal government has warned to caravan of Central American migrants traveling to the United States via Mexico that if they enter the country illegally they will be detained and deported.
In a joint statement, the secretaries of Foreign Affairs (SRE) and the Interior (Segob) said that in accordance with the law, anyone who enters Mexico “irregularly” will be “rescued” and subjected to review.

If they do not have the required documentation they will be returned to their own country.

The statement said the measure “responds not just to compliance with national legislation” but also to the government’s interest in avoiding migrants becoming “victims of human trafficking networks.”

More than 200 Federal Police officers arrived in Tapachula, Chiapas, yesterday to help the National Immigration Institute (INM) secure the southern border. The organization’s chief, Manelich Castilla, traveled to the border city earlier this week.

As many as 4,000 mainly Honduran migrants fleeing poverty and crime are planning to travel through Mexico to the United States, infuriating U.S. President Trump.

Many are traveling on foot, some with babies and small children, while others are in buses.

One Honduran whose legs had to be amputated after he fell from a Mexican freight train during an attempt to get to the United States in 2015 is trying again. This time a fellow migrant is pushing his wheelchair.