Globel Restructuring and Union Mobilization: An Analysis of Hotel Unionization in San Francisco, California

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Transnational migration and global restructuring have produced an anomalous situation in San Francisco, where a powerful local labor union that is increasingly female and immigrant has contracts covering three quarters of the better hotels, with wages significantly higher than comparable non-unionized cities. The increase in immigration of Asian and Latino workers to the U.S. has usually been accused of responsibility for the relative decline of labor unions. This project, involving a cultural anthropologist from the University of California at Davis and her graduate students, will study unionization and labor relations in the San Francisco hotel industry. The project will combine archival research on the historical development and structure of the local hotel industry, economic restructuring, and specifically the history of the local union organization. In depth interviews with key actors in this situation will focus on key events of union mobilization, the roles of women and immigrants and the impacts of economic and demographic restructuring. This case study will refine and build upon recent theories of political process of social movements, which have tended to slight developing local interests, activities and meanings in favor of national structures, constraints and opportunities. This research will provide an important in-depth case study that will advance our understanding of the basic causes relating migration, gender, economic restructuring and unionization.