Thursday's Local 2 of San Francisco

SFHotelStories has endeavored to analyze, extrapolate and opine on the Venn Diagram overlap of San Francisco and hospitality. I have written and commented on all things about travel and tourism in the city. From highlighting specific hotels and their unique history, to the state hospitality and Covid, to budget travelling. I have attempted to bring the reader into this both very public, but also mysterious world.

San Francisco hotels are just buildings, and one of the attributes which makes them more than the sum of their parts, is their staff.

San Francisco is also a union town, full stop.

And the hotel workers are the real glue which binds hospitality in this city. UNITE-HERE Local 2 represents over 15,000 hotel and restaurant workers in San Francisco Bay Area and is my old union.

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UNITE-HERE Local 2 certainly does not operate in a vacuum as labor history goes back almost to the days of the Comstock Load. From Denis Kearney and the Workingmen’s Party from the 1870s, to Eugene Schmitz. He was the president of the Musicians Union and found himself mayor during the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.

Organized labor came into its own during the West Coast Waterfront Strike of 1934, which shut down shipping from Seattle to San Diego, including San Francisco. Thousands of longshoremen, and supporters from other unions demanded recognition of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), and better working conditions.

On July 5th 1934, laborers Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoisew were shot and killed on what has now become known as Bloody Thursday. In the days that followed, over 150,000 laborers (including hotel workers) took to the streets in solidarity and effectively shut the city down.

There are many reasons for the rights we take for granted today, but I have read that the eight-hour workday and weekends off, found their origins in the sacrifices of that strike. And the hotel workers were right there manning those labor ramparts throughout all of organized labor’s struggles.  In 1975 the plethora of hotel workers unions, and those of bartenders and waiters, united and formed the Hotel & Restaurant Employees Local 2.

A test of the new union’s resolve came during the first major city-wide strike in forty years.  In 1980, workers from all 36 union hotels walked off the job in a strike which lasted four weeks.

The first job I ever had in hotels was when I worked as the graveyard-shift bellman at a Holiday Inn in 1988.  And it was part of Local 2.  All of a sudden, I had union benefits which served a starving student well.  But what was even better was that the union mandated the hotel to provide food for the workers, so every night I raided the refrigerator for the meal of the day and brought Ziplock bags for a meal later that day.

A year later I worked for a different Local 2 hotel, and it was there I discovered the value of being in a union.  About six months after I started, I found myself in need of an emergency Appendectomy.  If it wasn’t for the union, who knows how much I would have to pay out of pocket.  I would probably be in thousands of dollars in debt, have to quit college, and move back home.  After two and a half months, I was back at my (union) job.

Being in Local 2 informed me about the solidarity many union workers have. I got my mettle tested on the picket line when workers at the history Mark Hopkins Hotel on Nob Hill went on strike in the early 1990s.  Mike Casey, then the president of our Local 2, sought volunteers to cover the gaps for the overnight shifts on the picket line.  Lots of people were willing to strike during the day, but not so much from 1:00am to 5:00am. 

I happened to have no personal life back then and volunteered to help out in the wee hours of the morning.  To my surprise, amongst the sprinkling of union members manning the line in those dark hours before dawn, was none other than Mike Casey himself. He filled in when no one else would.

And Local 2 just keeps getting stronger and larger.  In 2004 HERE merged with the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), to form an even more resilient union: UNITE-HERE.  And is there no better acronym for the union than that?    Even well into the 21st century there is still a need for collective bargaining in San Francisco hospitality.  Just as recently as 2024, after working months without a contract, several thousand hotel workers went on strike. 

It lasted over three months, and those walking the picket line got what they mostly asked for.   For over a hundred years hotel workers have fought, and sacrificed, for the rights many of us take for granted.  Whether you are a 90 pound, 55 year old housekeeper or a six-foot engineer, UNITE-HERE Local 2 has your back in the face of ever-changing corporate ownership.

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