San Francisco hotel workers near the end of a 3-month strike

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San Francisco hotel workers near the end of a 3-month strike

2024-12-25 05:57 Last Updated At：06:00

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (AP) — The last group of striking hotel workers in San Francisco are voting Tuesday to approve a tentative agreement for a new contract with Hilton, ending a strike that has lasted three months.

The vote comes after similar deals were made with Marriott and Hyatt in the past week, bringing an end to the strike for around 1,750 workers at those hotels, according to the union Unite Here Local 2.

Since September, more than 10,000 hotel workers have gone on strike in 11 cities across the U.S. The San Francisco strike grew to include about 2,500 hotel workers, according to Unite Here Local 2. Some were arrested during a demonstration in October as union members sat in a busy street by a Hilton hotel.

The agreement with Hilton would cover about 900 workers, including 650 workers who have been on strike for over three months at the Hilton hotel in San Francisco's Union Square neighborhood and 250 workers who were prepared to strike at another Hilton property across the street, the union said.

“We believe this agreement is beneficial to both our team members and our hotels," Hilton Senior Vice President Paul Ades said in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming our team members back to work and continuing to provide our guests with our signature hospitality.”

The union said the deal includes preserving workers’ union health insurance plans, wage increases, and new protections against understaffing and workload increases. The new contract would expire in 2028.

“These 93 days have not been easy, and I’m so proud that my coworkers and I never gave up,” Bill Fung, a janitor at the Union Square hotel, said in a statement. “We stood together through the rain and cold, and even though there were some hard days, it was all worth it."

Hundreds of hotel workers represented by the Culinary Workers Union are still on strike in Las Vegas after walking off the job in mid-November amid a contentious fight for a new contract with Virgin Hotels. It is the union's longest strike in more than two decades.

In March of this year, hotel workers in Southern California ratified contracts with more than 30 hotels after repeated strikes in the summer of 2023.

Video captures Minneapolis immigration arrest in a city on edge after shooting of Renee Good

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal agents carrying out immigration arrests in Minnesota's Twin Cities region already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman rammed the door of one home Sunday and pushed their way inside, part of what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest enforcement operation ever.

In a dramatic scene similar to those playing out across Minneapolis, agents captured a man in the home just minutes after pepper spraying protesters outside who had confronted the heavily armed federal agents. Along the residential street, protesters honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt the operation.

Video of the clash taken by The Associated Press showed some agents pushing back protesters while a distraught woman later emerged from the house with a document that federal agents presented to arrest the man. Signed by an immigration officer, the document — unlike a warrant signed by a judge — does not authorize forced entry into a private residence. A warrant signed by an immigration officer only authorizes arrest in a public area.

Immigrant advocacy groups have conducted extensive “know-your-rights” campaigns urging people not to open their doors unless agents have a court order signed by a judge.

But within minutes of ramming the door in a neighborhood filled with single-family homes, the handcuffed man was led away.

More than 2,000 immigration arrests have been made in Minnesota since the enforcement operation began at the beginning of December, said Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News on Sunday that the administration would send additional federal agents to Minnesota to protect immigration officers and continue enforcement.

The Twin Cities — the latest target in President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign — is bracing for what is next after 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by an immigration officer on Wednesday.

“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”

Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.

People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners Sunday in the neighborhood where Good was killed, watching for any signs of federal agents.

More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .

“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.

The protests have been largely peaceful, but residents remained anxious. On Monday, Minneapolis public schools will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.

Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.

While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said that the investigation into Good's shooting death should not be overseen solely by the federal government.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.

“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened," Smith said on ABC’s "This Week."

The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.

Todd Lyons, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”

"That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.

Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn't be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”

The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests in cities across the country over the weekend, including New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Oakland, California.

Contributing were Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis; Thomas Strong in Washington; Bill Barrow in Atlanta; Christopher Weber in Los Angeles; and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio.