S.F. hotel strike may spread to Oakland

November 18, 2009 5:54 PM ET

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Sarah Duxbury

Should the San Francisco hotel union labor dispute get more heated, Oakland may not prove a safe haven for visitors seeking a neutral place to stay.

On Nov. 18, over 400 members of Unite Here Local 2850 plan to march from the Oakland Downtown Marriott to Frank Ogawa Plaza and ending up at 22nd Street and Kaiser Place.

“Basically, the San Francisco hotel worker strike is coming over to Oakland,” said Nischit Hegde, a spokeswoman for Unite Here Local 2850. “This is a Bay Area thing.”

Hegde said that over 1,000 members of Local 2850 have been working without a contract, some for as long as three years.

The sticking points in labor negotiations in Oakland are the same as in San Francisco, Hegde said, namely the cost of health care and disagreements over who should be responsible for those rising costs.

The Oakland union members have not voted to authorize a strike, though members have been contributing to a strike fund for the past three years, Hegde said.

Over the past three weeks, San Francisco’s hotel worker union, Unite Here Local 2, has called three strikes against three San Francisco Hotels, the Grand Hyatt, the Sheraton Palace Hotel and the Westin St. Francis.

Workers from the Oakland Marriott, Downtown Courtyard Marriott, Claremont, Hilton Oakland Airport and Oakland Coliseum will participate in Local 2850’s afternoon demonstration.

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