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By Doug Cunningham

UNITE-HERE hotel workers paid an average of $30,000 a year are fighting to get a one and a half percent raise from a hotel company that gave it's CEO $1.4 billion dollars in 2008. In San Francisco Tuesday these hotel workers, without a contract since last August, used civil disobedience protests to turn up the heat on the Hilton, Starwood and Grand Hyatt hotels. The union is boycotting these hotels until workers win a raise with a new contract. UNITE-HERE’s Riddhi Mehti says Hilton hotels recently said they have $12.6 billion in capital and they could easily afford a one and half percent raise for workers.

[Riddhi Mehti]: “When hotels says that they are struggling it’s not true at all. They are actually gearing themselves up to benefit from the economic recovery that everybody expects. What we find is unfair is that they expect us to make serious concessions and lock those concessions in for the long term where they prepare to reap the benefits of the economic recovery.”

AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka joined UNITE-HERE President John Wilhelm at the protests in San Francisco. The San Francisco struggle is part of UNITE-HERE’s Hotel Workers Rising movement. Hotel worker union contracts in several other cities will expire at the same time later this year. (Editor's Note: Both AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and UNITE-HERE President John Wilhelm were arrested along with about 100 hotel workers in the San Francisco civil disobedience action.)