Strike authorized at Pacific Division conference hotel

Workers at 13 San Francisco hotels, including the Westin St. Francis where the Pacific APA is scheduled to meet again in 2007, have voted to authorize a strike.  See the news stories linked below for an update on the labor situation at our conference hotel (a strike date has not yet been set, but last Thursday, several hundred union members participated in an informational picket outside of the Westin St. Francis):

Employees at 13 hotels vote to authorize a strike

Strike Threatens Rebound in San Francisco Tourism

Last spring, when Pacific division members learned that our Executive committee decided to enter another contract with the St. Francis, I asked (on this blog and elsewhere) whether our Executive Committee has made plans for an alternative meeting place, given the possibility of a strike or of an ongoing labor dispute at our conference hotel in the months leading up to the meeting.  I've checked the APA webpages and have not yet found any mention of the labor situation at our conference hotel. If we do not want to find ourselves in the situation we faced in 2005, without plans or alternatives, I would think that planning should begin ASAP. Has anyone heard of any planning within the APA in response to the hotel situation in S.F.? What do folks think the APA should do at this moment?

Comments

[Account Deleted]

Well, we may be in luck this year, a tentative agreement has been reached, see:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/13/BAGG9L4KHS1.DTL

[Jamie]

Thanks, Laurie.

[Michael Cholbi]

Laurie,

Thanks for the information and the update. It seems to me there is a larger APA national issue here, namely, the non-existence (so far as I know) of contingency plans regarding the divisional meetings. A labor strike is only one such a contingency; at some point, we'll likely have to confront the possibility of a divisional meeting being cancelled, moved, rescheduled, etc. because of a natural disaster. (I'm often surprised that such a fate has not befallen the Eastern meeting, given the probability of a snowstorm hitting New York, Boston, etc. around Christmas.) And to my knowledge, there is no backup plan for divisional meetings, and this is problematic irrespective of the ethical or political questions raised by the labor situation in San Francisco.