On March 24, more than 400 hotel and casino workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 355, traveled to the Miami Beach Resort Hotel to demonstrate on the narrow sidewalk along a row of luxury hotels facing the Biscayne Bay.
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UNITE HERE members organized buses from the Isle and Gulf Stream Casinos, the Fountain Bleu and Diplomat Hotels, as well as from the Ft. Lauderdale International Airport and other shops represented by Local 355.
The police, responding to noise complaints from the hotel management—whose real concerns had little to do with noise—moved to have organizers end the demonstration early. Police harassed demonstrators as the arrival of additional buses further swelled the crowds, but there was not much they could do to quell the action. The march brought traffic to a halt for several minutes as protesters picketed in front of the Beach Resort.
The scene was drastically different from the activities of the super rich that the area is normally reserved for. During the recent Yacht Show, Miami Police where more than accommodating for the tiny elite that participated.
At the rally held adjacent to the entrance to the beach, workers from each of the shops represented by Local 355 gave talks to their fellow workers. Hundreds of workers and supporters wearing the colors of UNITE HERE turned the rally into a sea of red.
Emmanuel Lopez, member of the contract negotiating committee at the Isle Casino in Pompano Park, spoke about the need for workers to organize and fight together during this economic crisis:
“Every time a working person is laid off, they say that it’s because there is no money. Every day that a person goes sick because they do not have health care, or because they do not have quality healthcare, we know it’s to protect their profits. Every time a family is thrown on the streets because of foreclosure, it’s to protect the so-called ‘free market.’ The banks and corporations spoon-feed their excuses to workers while they continue to steal $9.5 trillion of the peoples’ money in bailouts!
“We have to organize as working people to realize the demands that we are all fighting for: that the right to a job—a union job that pays a living wage—the right to free and universal health care, the right to a free, quality education, the right to free childcare, and the right to retire no longer be considered gifts from the politicians, banks or corporations, but that these rights be considered human rights.”
The initiative of Local 355 to not only mobilize a solidarity march of all the workers represented in South Florida to stand with their sisters and brothers in the Miami Beach Resort, but to begin the necessary fight back struggle against the attacks on workers during this economic crisis is a great step forward. The importance of organized labor struggles will increase as working people look to this arena as the first, and most immediate means by which they can fight back against the offensive of the capitalist bosses.
These early battles and experiences help push the struggles of the working class to the next level—from workplace battles for wages and benefits to political battles on the streets for a new system where people’s needs, not profits, become the driving force of the economy.
