Vol.64/No.19 May 15, 2000
Minnesota hotel workers beat back deportation of unionists
BY DOUG JENNESS
MINNEAPOLIS —In a significant victory for the labor movement, seven of eight hotel workers who had been threatened with deportation to Mexico have won an agreement from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that they can remain in the United States for at least two years.
The INS arrested the eight workers last October during a union-organizing campaign at the Holiday Inn Express. Public protests at that time forced federal authorities to delay their deportation until a hearing was held. The National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission investigated the case and negotiated an agreement in January that Holiday Inn Express pay each worker $8,000 for workplace abuses.
When lawyers for the workers and the INS announced the accord that all but one could stay, more than 100 cheering supporters were on hand outside the immigration court in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington. The agreement does not cover an eighth worker, who had previously been deported from the United States and had reentered a second time without papers.
The victory has given a big boost to the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) Local 17, which is currently in contract negotiations. Less than a week after the agreement was announced, hundreds of hotel workers and supporters rallied May 1 in front of the Minneapolis Hilton demanding a "fair contract now."
The spirited demonstrators — shouting chants, beating on pots and pans, and blowing whistles — demanded pay hikes, and employer-paid health care and English-language training. That day the contract covering 1,300 hotel workers at nine Minneapolis and Bloomington hotels expired. The union local has 4,000 members in the Twin Cities area.
Many participants sported red T-shirts with a coiled snake in front and inscribed with the promise, "Will strike if provoked." The back of the shirt bore the words: "Negotiating Committee 2000, Local 17." Several workers wearing the shirts explained that a contract committee of more than 80 workers, all volunteers from each department of the hotels involved in the negotiations, meets once a week to review the hotel owners' offers and help keep workers in all the hotels informed of the status of negotiations. The contract committee has selected from its ranks a negotiating committee of 40.
The participants included contingents from the Service Employees International Union and United Food and Commercial Workers. Eight hotel workers organized by HERE Local 21 drove up from Rochester, Minnesota. Two representatives from the United Steelworkers Local 1028 who are locked out at MEI in Duluth, Minnesota, solicited support for their fight.
At the peak the demonstration reached 700 when a number of political organizations celebrating May Day joined the action for awhile.