What’s that Ruckus in Downtown SF? Hotel Workers on Strike!

Luxury global corporate hotels like the Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton earn massive profits annually. In 2023, Marriott’s net income was $3.08 billion. This enormous profit pleases its shareholders.

CEOs of these hotel giants are also paid astronomical sums. In 2023, the Marriott CEO - Anthony Capuano - earned $22,664,045. Shareholders don’t have any problems with him getting that sum, as long as the stock price is elevating.

So - are the salaries of the Room Cleaners, Cooks, Dishwashers, Servers, Bartenders, Bell Persons, and hotel workers, equally generous? NO. They receive very little money in their wages, not enough to live in San Francisco.

Here’s the math — The Marriott CEO makes, per year, 365 times more than a Room Cleaner. Shameful Capitalist GREED.

Additionally, the hotel workers don’t have affordable healthcare, or sufficient money for retirement, and their workplace standards are being rolled back. Succinctly, they are getting totally screwed over by selfish management that doesn’t care about them, but wants to minimize expenses to please the shareholders.

If you’ve been in downtown San Francisco recently, you’ve surely heard enormous volumes of noise erupting from multiple directions. Walk towards these tsunamis of sound and you will find hotel workers on strike! Banging thunderously on giant empty oil drums and huge water jugs, chanting determinedly through megaphones and marching in circles holding placards of outrage

Local 2 is the union organizing this cacophonous revolt. The hotel workers are putting in long hours in the picket lines - 7:00am - 10:00 pm is what I was told by the crowd coordinator at the St. Francis Hotel.

Hotel workers held a successful march, attended by hundreds, on December 11, and negotiations are currently ongoing. No justice, no peace!

The USA needs to establish maximum salaries or this economic brutality will continue. I suggest $300,000 maximum, or a 10-1 ratio between CEOs and unskilled workers.