Sponsored link
Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Sponsored link

News + PoliticsLaborMajor hotels in SF face looming strike

Major hotels in SF face looming strike

Large, feisty rally presages likely walkoff at Westin, Hyatt, Hilton.

-

The three largest hotels in San Francisco are facing what could be a massive and lengthy strike as members of Local 2 have voted to authorize a walkoff—and rallied today to send a message to management.

“We are very far apart,” Lizzy Tapia, Local 2 president, told me at the picket today.

Hundreds of Local 2 workers marched on the picket line today.

Hundreds of workers marched today in front of the Westin St. Francis, one of the three major hotels that are in contract talks with the union. They’re working under an expired contract, and are asking for pay increases that at least keep up with the cost of living.

“People are fired up,” Tapia said.

“We want a fair contract that allows us to support our family in our daily life,” Bill Fung, who has worked at the Hyatt for 29 years, told me.

Fung said he used to have two other colleagues who helped clean carpets and support housekeepers. “Not it’s just me, with more than 2,000 rooms.”

Bill Fung is now doing the job of three people.

The union is talking with Westin, Hyatt, and Hilton hotels, and the contract they reach with those three will influence contracts with other hotels in the city.

Tapia told me there’s a very good chance the workers will strike, causing serious problems for the big hotels, which are at this point running at 65 to 70 percent capacity.

Local 2 President Lizzy Tapia says the two sides are very far apart.

This is still a union town, and while tourists were checking into the Westin today while the workers marched outside, there’s no way a strike won’t have serious financial impacts on the hotel industry—which these days isn’t so much a hotel industry as a real-estate industry. Westin is owned by Marriott, which is a massive multinational operation. Hilton is a publicly traded corporation owned largely by giant institutional investors. Hyatt is owned by the billionaire Pritzker family.

None of these outfits is financially struggling.

And yet, “the companies’ response is to move backward,” Tapia said. “They would have to come a very long way to avoid a strike.”

48 Hills welcomes comments in the form of letters to the editor, which you can submit here. We also invite you to join the conversation on our FacebookTwitter, and Instagram

Tim Redmond
Tim Redmond
Tim Redmond has been a political and investigative reporter in San Francisco for more than 30 years. He spent much of that time as executive editor of the Bay Guardian. He is the founder of 48hills.
Sponsored link
Sponsored link

Featured

Fancy a beer with Tim Redmond?

We're looking for sponsors for our October 22 Gala—and sweetening the pot with a personal bull session with our editor.

City Lights poetry editor revisits the lion of Surrealism, André Breton

Interview with Garrett Caples on reissuing Philip Lamantia—and how Breton contributed to the fall of the Haitian government.

Best of the Bay 2025 Editors’ Pick: Compton’s Cafeteria Riot

The city thought it would never see itself done right onstage after 'Beach Blanket Babylon.' Then this long-running show came along.

More by this author

Defining land-use battle heads to supes, Planning Commission

Plus: Who wins when transit loses—and another giveaway to market-rate housing developers. That's The Agenda for Sept. 8-15

Rec-Park director knew well in advance of major nonprofit problems—and did nothing

Public records show Phil Ginsburg was aware for more than six months that the Parks Alliance was failing, leaving community groups without their money

Muni riders, bus drivers, bikers, people who walk beg SFMTA Commission to do its job

Panel allows mayor to open mid-Market to Lyft, Uber, Waymo, defying existing policy—and won't even vote on it
Sponsored link

You might also likeRELATED