Workers at the main hotel — Hilton San Francisco Union Square — associated with the 2011 AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco have authorized strikes against the hotel. The union’s website, UniteHere! Local 2, has an explanation for why union members have authorized this step. For its part, AALS has decided not to change venues for the conference, again for reasons given in a letter dated Sep. 27, 2010. Apparently, AALS decided not to follow the recommendation of SALT, which in a Sep. 1, 2010 letter urged AALS to honor the boycott.
What does this mean for the annual meeting and for participants? UniteHere2 has a link to a webpage on www.hotelworkersrising.org that breaks union hotels in San Francisco into three helpful categories: please patronize, boycott these properties, and risk of dispute. According to the AALS letter, efforts are going to be made to relocate some, but probably not all, programs to non-Hilton locations in the next couple of weeks and there will be provision for packet pickup that does not require picket lines be broken. But program details will be worked out between now and the conference, with information posted to http://www.aals.org/am2011/.
San Fran Copyright Ezra Rosser
Poverty Law 
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