Labor, community support fired hotel workers

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.pww.org/index.php/article/articleview/11056/1/371

People's Weekly World Newspaper, 05/10/07 16:30

Labor, community support fired hotel workers
Author: Marilyn Bechtel

EMERYVILLE, Calif. — Drumbeats and chants echoed through this city’s upscale shopping hub May 3 as hundreds of protesters rallied in front of the Woodfin Suite Hotel to support 12 immigrant workers unjustly fired after they demanded their rights under a living wage law. Rally participants also supported the boycott of the hotel announced by workers and community leaders last December.


Woodfin workers support rally. PWW photo by Marilyn Bechtel.

Longshore workers, teachers, building trades and city workers were there, together with religious, immigrant rights and other community organizations.

“When the living wage ordinance was approved, that’s when we started having problems,” Guadalupe Gonzalez, a longtime Woodfin housekeeper who was fired, said before the rally. “They started scrutinizing our work more closely, bothering us about little things. When we turned in petitions demanding the hotel follow the living wage ordinance, that’s when things got really sticky.”


Guadalupe Gonzalez. Photo by Marilyn Bechtel/PWW.

Gonzalez later told the crowd, “This is the only hotel in Emeryville that has not complied with the living wage law. They are cold-hearted and don’t want to give us what is our right.”

FULL story at link.