Over the past four years, EBASE has worked with courageous housekeepers in Emeryville hotels to raise wages, improve job safety, and protect immigrant workers’ right to organize and speak out. We’ve won and defended a groundbreaking living wage law, and we’re still fighting alongside workers from Emeryville’s Woodfin Hotel to win back pay for living wage violations.

In 2005, EBASE led a successful campaign to pass Measure C, a living wage and workplace safety law for hotel housekeepers in the city of Emeryville. We worked with housekeepers to assert their rights under the new law, helping Courtyard Marriott workers win wage increases of $3 to $4 per hour. But one hotel – the Woodfin Suites, owned by Southern California Republican Sam Hardage – refused to accept the living wage. The hotel repeatedly sued the city government, seeking to overturn Measure C, and managers simply ignored the ordinance’s workplace safety rules.

When Woodfin workers began urging their employer to obey the law and reporting violations to the city government, managers harassed workers and threatened their jobs. In 2007, the hotel fired twelve housekeepers who had been involved in the campaign to enforce Measure C. Managers even used their Republican political connections to convince the Department of Homeland Security to launch an immigration investigation of their own workers.

EBASE and the Woodfin housekeepers – along with a network of union members, people of faith, students, Emeryville residents, and community activists – launched a powerful campaign to win enforcement of the living wage and resist the hotel’s anti-immigrant attacks. We organized countless creative demonstrations and a highly successful boycott of the hotel. In the midst of the dispute, the Woodfin finally began complying with Measure C’s work safety requirements.

In late 2007, the City of Emeryville ordered the Woodfin to pay some $200,000 in back wages to housekeepers to compensate them for violations of Measure C. After Woodfin owner Hardage refused, the case advanced to court. In a victory for the living wage movement, in April 2008 an Alameda County Superior judge upheld the living wage law's constitutionality - marking the Woodfin's third and final defeat in its efforts to squash the law. The judge also had some procedural concerns with Emeryville's first hearing, and ordered the City to re-do the process.

Emeryville staff then issued a revised back-wage order in August 2008 - which Woodfin once again appealed to the City Council. After a marathon 5-day hearing process, the Emeryville City Council once again decided to order the Woodfin to pay some $200,000 in back wages; the council adopted findings of fact in March 2009. Most recently, on December 14, 2009, Alameda County Superior Judge Steven Brick upheld the city's back wage order and rejected all of Woodfin's legal arguments - a crushing legal defeat for the hotel.

Until workers have checks in hand, the boycott of the Woodfin Suites Hotel will continue. ¡Si se puede!