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FILIPINO WORKERS IN THE U.S. FIGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS

Los Angeles-- Thousands of FIlipino workers in the hospitals, hotels and ships all over the United States went on strike to fight for their rights. Thousands of them in the different unions are poised to fight for their economic rights until next year.

In Long Beach,a Greek ship operator agreed to pay a portion of the back pay, owed to 18 Filipino sailors who went on strike while docked in that port in California.

Sea Justice/S/A, operator of the ship Endless, agreed Monday, Sept. 11 to pay $ 227,000 and bring the sailors back to the Philippines with a promise that they will not face retaliation in their country. The sailors feared that they would be put into a blacklist and will not be able to find work again.

Jeff Engles, the International Transport Workers Federation found out that the ship owner owned the Filipinos more than $ 300,000. The Filipino workers refused to work or sail since Sept. 7 while the ship was docked in Long Beach, a port of Los Angeles.

The Filipinos were supported by the labor unions and the Filipino community around Long Beach, Carson and Wilmington. All cities have large Filipino communities and active community and civic organizations supported the Filipino workers strike.

Filipino Hotel Workers On The Roll

Meanwhile in San Francisco, hotel workers from UNITE-HERE broke the deadlock in their 2-year collective bargaining agreement with the owners of 14 hotels and concluded a tentative agreement ending their 2 –year rolling strike. More than half the union members of UNITE-HERE are Filipinos.

Earlier, employees at full-service San Francisco hotels, most of whom have been working without a contract since a 2004 strike and lock-out, have voted 93 percent in favor of authorizing union negotiators to call a strike.

The action follows strike authorizations this week for hotels in Honolulu, Chicago and Monterey, California, as well as an earlier strike vote in Toronto, where the labor pact expired in January.

The UNITE HERE union has lined up contract expirations this year as part of its campaign to boost membership and improve wages and conditions for hotel workers such as housekeepers, kitchen staff and food servers.

Unionized workers at Waikiki Beach resorts -- including those operated by Hilton Hotels Corp., Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. and Marriott International Inc. all in Hawaii -- have been without a contract since the end of June, while the pact covering 7,000 Chicago workers will expire at the end of this month.

Contracts covering hotels workers in Boston and Los Angeles will expire in January and the union in June reached a new six-year contract covering 23,000 members at 133 New York City hotels.

The San Francisco local said the latest strike authorization was an effort to bring contract negotiations, which resumed this summer, to a conclusion. Contracts covering 8,000 San Francisco workers expired in 2004, and contracts covering another 1,000 workers expired this year.

The union said that in addition to economic issues, key sticking points include increasing workloads, especially for kitchen workers and housekeepers.

Filipino Hospital Workers on Strike

In New Brunswick, New Jersey, more than 2,000 hospital workers , more than half of them Filipinos launched their strike against the unfair labor practices and to demand better pay and working conditions in the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital.

Earlier, Filipino immigrant workers mostly nurses and hospital workers who were recruited from the Philippines complained about their recruiting agency and filed a case in New Jersey. The Filipino community in the east coast are supporting their mass actions and supported their case against the malpractices of the agency.

With the these mass actions, the Filipinos in the mainstream labor unions are taking the lead in fighting for workers strike and for better economic conditions in the United States.

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