Mike Casey (born January 6, 1958) is the president of the San Francisco Labor Council [1] and the former president of the 12,000-member Local 2 chapter of UNITE HERE, the union that represents hotel and restaurant workers in San Francisco. He was elected president of the union, Local 2, in 1994 and succeeded by Anand Singh in June 2015.
Casey has a reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator and a creative union leader. In 1994, he led a successful 73-day strike to reach an agreement with the Mark Hopkins hotel. He led seven-year battles to unionize the Parc 55 and the San Francisco Marriott hotels, and a nine-year crusade to reach an agreement with the Sir Francis Drake hotel.
In 2002, after UNITE HERE won an agreement with the San Francisco Marriott hotels, Marriott executive Hank Biddle said about Casey at a banquet to mark the agreement, "The things you said you were going to deliver, you delivered. And when you looked me in the eye and said you were going to have 1,000 (demonstrators) out in front of this hotel, damned if you didn't do that, too." [2]
At the appointment of Mayor Willie Brown, Casey served as a City Commissioner on San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Agency from 2000 to 2004. He is president of the San Francisco Labor Council (see Who waits in the wings ), a Vice President of the California Labor Federation and a Vice President of the International Union of Unite Here.
The son of union activists, Casey was born in San Francisco and grew up in Stockton and Sacramento. Prior to joining UNITE HERE in 1986, Casey worked for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. He studied Irish literature at UC Berkeley. He is married with two children.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) is a labor union representing approximately 1.3 million workers in the United States and Canada in industries including retail; meatpacking, food processing and manufacturing; hospitality; agriculture; cannabis; chemical trades; security; textile, and health care. UFCW is affiliated with the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the AFL–CIO; it disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO in 2005 but reaffiliated in 2013. UFCW is also affiliated to UNI Global Union and the IUF.
John Joseph Sweeney was an American labor leader who served as president of the AFL–CIO from 1995 to 2009.
UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with roughly 300,000 active members. The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 by the merger of Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE).
John Francis Shelley was a U.S. politician. He served as the 35th mayor of San Francisco, from 1964 to 1968, the first Democrat elected to the office in 50 years, and the first in an unbroken line of Democratic mayors that lasts to the present. His term in the United States House of Representatives, immediately prior to his mayoralty (1949-1964), also broke a long streak of Republican tenure and began a streak of Democratic representatives from San Francisco that continues to the present.
The 1934 West Coast waterfront strike lasted 83 days, and began on May 9, 1934, when longshoremen in every US West Coast port walked out. Organized by the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), the strike peaked with the death of two workers on "Bloody Thursday" and the subsequent San Francisco General Strike, which stopped all work in the major port city for four days and led ultimately to the settlement of the West Coast Longshoremen's Strike.
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), whose members were employed in the women's clothing industry, was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first US unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s. The union, generally referred to as the "ILGWU" or the "ILG", merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in the 1990s to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE. The two unions that formed UNITE in 1995 represented 250,000 workers between them, down from the ILGWU's peak membership of 450,000 in 1969.
The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, often simply the United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC), was formed in 1881 by Peter J. McGuire and Gustav Luebkert. It has become one of the largest trade unions in the United States, and through chapters, and locals, there is international cooperation that poises the brotherhood for a global role. For example, the North American Chapter has over 520,000 members throughout the continent.
Matthew McCarten is a New Zealand political organiser and trade unionist, of Ngāpuhi descent. McCarten was active with several trade unions including the Hotel and Hospital Workers' Union, the Unite Union, and the One Union; the latter two of which he co-founded.
The George R. Moscone Convention Center, popularly known as the Moscone Center, is the largest convention and exhibition complex in San Francisco, California, United States. The complex consists of three main halls spread out across three blocks and 87 acres (35 ha) in the South of Market neighborhood. The convention center originally opened in 1981. It is named after former San Francisco mayor George Moscone, who was assassinated in November 1978.
The Hilton San Francisco Union Square is a skyscraper hotel located several blocks south-west of Union Square in San Francisco, California. Opened in 1964, the 18-story, 1200-room original building was known as a "motel within a hotel", allowing guests to park directly next to their upper-story rooms. Filling an entire city block, it remains one of the tallest structures representing Brutalist architecture, though it has been extensively altered since its construction. A second 46-story tower was added in 1971, while a third smaller 23-story connecting tower was completed in 1987. Renovated in 2017, it is the largest hotel on the West Coast, with 1,921 rooms.
María Elena Durazo is an American politician serving in the California State Senate. A Democrat, from 2018 to 2022 she represented the 24th State Senatorial district and has been representing the 26th district since 2022 which encompasses Central Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, and Vernon.
The Westin St. Francis, formerly known as St. Francis Hotel, is a hotel located on Powell and Geary Streets in San Francisco, adjacent to the whole western edge of Union Square. The two 12-story south wings of the hotel were built in 1904, and the double-width north wing was completed in 1913, initially as apartments for permanent guests. This section is referred to as the Landmark Building on the hotel's website. The 32-story, 120 m (390 ft) tower to the rear, referred to as the Tower Building, which was completed in 1972, features exterior glass elevators that offer panoramic views of the bay and the square below, making the St. Francis one of the largest hotels in the city, with more than 1,254 rooms and suites.
The Culinary Workers Union, UNITE HERE Local 226 is a local union affiliated with UNITE HERE which operates in the Las Vegas metropolitan area of Nevada. Members include a variety of occupations organized along craft lines working in restaurants, hotels and laundries, in the casinos in the Las Vegas metropolitan area and Reno, as well as Harry Reid International Airport and Valley Hospital Medical Center. While most Culinary members work in casinos, the union does not represent dealers and other employees directly providing gaming services. The union also has a partnership with the Culinary Academy of Las Vegas, which Hattie Canty, the first African-American woman elected to be president of the Culinary Union, was instrumental in organizing. Local 165 of UNITE HERE represents bartenders in Las Vegas although the two locals negotiate contracts in tandem.
The Grand Hyatt San Francisco is a skyscraper hotel located half a block north of Union Square in San Francisco, California. The 36-storey, 660 room 108 m (354 ft) tower was completed in 1972, as the Hyatt on Union Square and renamed the Grand Hyatt San Francisco in 1990.
Workers United is an American and Canadian labor union which represents about 86,000 workers in the apparel, textile, commercial laundry, distribution, food service, hospitality, fitness and non-profit industries. It was established in its current form in 2009 and is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Mary Kay Henry is an American labor union activist who was International President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) from May 8, 2010 until her retirement on May 20, 2024. She was the first woman to lead the union. While serving with the union in California, she helped pioneer SEIU's use of card check agreements, non-traditional collective bargaining agreements, comprehensive campaigns, and system-wide health care organizing strategies. Henry was included on Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
Marriott Marquis Washington, DC is a luxury hotel located on Massachusetts Avenue NW, in NW, Washington, D.C., United States. The hotel is connected to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center across 9th Street NW via an underground concourse and receives significant business from convention attendees.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is a labor union which primarily represents dock workers on the West Coast of the United States, Hawaii, and in British Columbia, Canada; on the East Coast, the dominant union is the International Longshoremen's Association. The union was established in 1937 after the 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike, a three-month-long strike that culminated in a four-day general strike in San Francisco, California, and the Bay Area. It disaffiliated from the AFL–CIO on August 30, 2013.
The 2018 Marriott Hotels strike was a strike of more than 7,700 workers across the United States at 23 hotels operated by Marriott International in late 2018. The strike began in October and went through early December.
Donald "D." Taylor is an American labor unionist.