the boycott works

I'm sure Unite-Here's boycott coordinators are thanking the MEG for the heads-up.

"The harassing phone calls to meeting planners have increased

dramatically," said Matt Adams, general manager of the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero

and a negotiator with the hotel coalition. "No one has canceled yet because of

it, but it certainly leaves a bad taste in their mouth."

The hotel

employees' union says it clearly and explicitly informed the hotels during

negotiations for the cooling off period that the boycott campaign would

continue. Mike Casey, president of local 2 of UNITE HERE, said the union has no

plans to back down from those efforts.

"We'll drive business out of these

hotels for the next five years if we get a chance," Casey said.

One group

that recently moved its event in response to the labor fracas is the MLK Labor

& Community Breakfast. The San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Martin

Luther King Jr.-day event, and its 600 participants, changed from the Hilton San

Francisco to the Golden Gateway Holiday Inn, said coordinator Millard Larkin.

That move, Larkin said, came in response to concerns from participants, many of

whom are union members, rather than in response to any outside lobbying by UNITE

HERE.

Mark Theis, head of the convention division at the San Francisco

Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the bureau has received a handful of calls

in the past three days from concerned meeting planners who have heard from the

union. One inquiry came from a speaker who was slated to speak at an event held

at one of the targeted properties. Union organizers had apparently pulled up his

name from an online meeting agenda.

"It doesn't send a signal of wanting to

cooperate," Theis said. "Ultimately, once these things do get hammered out, the

people they are calling are the ones putting the heads in the beds they need to

clean or the people in the cafes where they are delivering coffee."

Casey

said the union was concerned with the hotels' most recent offer, which he said

still has "huge cuts in health care," including caps on how much expense

increase will be paid for by the hotels, as opposed to workers.