Let's say you are planning your meeting in a city where labor negotiations are taking place. The contract was signed five years ago. Back then, you had done all of your homework - checking the date for new negotiations to take place between hotels and union workers. That date was just short of two years before your meeting. No worries, right? Wrong! Negotiations which were to take place in 2004 are still going on, and union members are working without a contract. Perhaps you are planning a meeting in a city that is not affected by labor negotiations. Yet, you are being called by union leaders to boycott the contracted hotels in a show of unity and sympathy with union members working without a contract in other cities. These union representatives are telling you they are going to call your members. What are you to do?

First of all, be familiar with the basics of hotel/union contract negotiations. Know both the hotels' position, and the union's. In most cities, the union is represented by the local chapter of UNITE HERE. UNITE (formerly the Union of Needletrades, Textiles and Industrial Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union) merged on July 8, 2004, forming UNITE HERE. Hotels may negotiate separately with their union employees, or may be represented by a group of hoteliers who make up a negotiating group (such as the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group [SFMEG]).

The PCMA Advocacy Task Force White Paper on Hotel and Convention Center Union Influence outlined these basic issues:

• Unions want to be able to negotiate with national hotel chains on a national level.
• Hotels say this is not possible due to the large degree of differences from one city to another, like wages, work rules, cost of living.
• Generally, hotels want a long-term agreement (five to six years), and the union prefers a two-year contract.
• Hotels believe the union's objective is to put them in a position of power by the threat of a national strike if they don't get what they want.

The White Paper Task Force did not hear from union representatives. The sidebars in this article should give you additional perspectives.

Next, you should know your members. This can guide you in monitoring the situation in your host city and at your host hotel(s). Are they likely to be sympathetic to the union's position? Or will they come to the meeting and stay in the contracted hotels, regardless? Are they likely to cross picket lines? In addition, you should know the position of your speakers and suppliers - and your board. How far in advance do they want to take action, to move or not to move? Convene's interviews with a variety of planners revealed that this reaction varies widely from organization to organization.

Know your members. Your association may have members who are sympathetic to the union position, even though your association is not a union.

When considering a city and/or hotels, always inquire as to when contracts will expire. Being forewarned is to be forearmed, as the old saying goes ... however, as noted in the introductory scenario, just knowing this date may not necessarily protect you. Negotiations may go on for a protracted period, or sympathy boycotts may take place. Stay in tune with what is going on at your destination. Work closely with the convention and visitors bureau to keep updated. And use the Web sites of the American Hotel and Lodging Association (www.ahla.com) and UNITE HERE (www.hotelworkersunited.org) to stay informed.

Know your contractual rights. Try to negotiate a clause that will ease your efforts in case of labor disputes. The wording, of course, would vary from meeting to meeting, hotel to hotel, and city to city. Most hoteliers realize that union groups are not in a position to be flexible. Their members just won't cross a picket line, period. But working together, you can craft wording that is helpful to both the hotels and the association.

Your association may have members who are sympathetic to the union position, even though your association is not a union. Force majeure clauses that include strikes as a reason to excuse performance of the contract will not protect you unless there is actually a strike. If your attendees will not come to the meeting site or stay in hotels where strikes are occurring, consider another alternative. Be forthright with hoteliers with whom you are negotiating. Work with them and with your attorney to craft language that is specific to your situation.

Even if your membership would attend in spite of labor actions, also have a clause that outlines minimal disruption to your meeting - including service levels, noise abatement, and alternate entrances. Every contract is different. Your organization's attorney should always be consulted before signing a contract.

Likewise, the hotel(s) need to be protected. A standard outcome could be invocation of the cancelation clause and payment of the contractual penalty, should you decide not to hold your meeting at the contracted facility(ies).

As the PCMA White Paper pointed out, depending on the facility and the group's history, it may be possible to develop a partnership approach to "reschedule" the meeting at a future date/time when the labor situation is resolved. This solution, of course, requires flexibility on both sides, and an interest in the longer-term relationship between the meeting sponsor and the facility.

Of course, you need to have a firm grasp of your organization's financial situation. The annual meeting is a major revenue generator for most associations. "Our annual meeting is our 'bread and butter,' the vehicle where we get the funds to run our organization," said Christina Scarmeas Marmor, director, meetings and conventions for the American Political Science Association (APSA). You need to make decisions before there is a major financial impact on your meeting. Relocation may cause attendance to decrease, because members may not be able to change travel plans, or may not find the alternate destination convenient or attractive.

If you cannot afford to move, because of the financial burden involved - both with cancellation fees, and with additional cost to advertise the move - and your attendees will not cross picket lines, consider communicating this to the local union, advised Sally Muravchik, director, conventions, meetings, and travel department, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFL-CIO. "Get in touch with the union leadership, and discuss the situation. Ask them how your organization can cooperate. Together you can come up with solutions to show support, such as wearing buttons or passing out flyers of support," she said.

Know the hotel's plans. As Ed Rudzinski, general manager of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, pointed out, "We have an obligation to keep the hotel open. Replacement workers would be called in from non-union hotels within the hotel group." Know how the hotel management plans to work with you, should there be picketing. Refer back to your contract. Work with them to design backup plans, if the need arises.

Union Contacts
Planners across the country report being contacted by union leadership in their meeting's destination city, asking the association and its attendees to boycott hotels. If this happens to you, how should you respond? In February 2005, PCMA, along with Meeting Professionals International (MPI), and the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership (ASAE), issued a statement encouraging both employers and employees to negotiate in good faith. However, the statement did not support union representatives contacting meeting planners directly to boycott hotels. And in April 2005, the Convention Industry Council (CIC) - while recognizing that legitimate disputes may arise between employers and their employees in the meetings industry - issued a statement responding to the report of secondary boycotts. Guidelines were mounted on the CIC Web site to assist planners in dealing with such union contacts (www.conventionindustry.org/resources/industry_resources).

Nicole Jackson-Unger, director of account management for Conference & Logistics Consultants Inc., was contacted by union representatives when arranging a meeting for health care professionals - since health benefits was one of the issues being discussed in her destination city. The leadership of her client organization was also contacted. She advised, "Check the facts from both sides before jumping to conclusions and making any decisions. If you are called, stick to the facts when speaking with the union. Union representatives can be aggressive to get their point across. Make sure you get both sides of the story, and that you are able to communicate the situation fairly to your attendees, if it becomes necessary."

To Move or Not to Move?
With apologies to the Bard, that is the question. As noted earlier, the answer truly depends - on your members' positions, on your association's leadership, on your financial situation. To gain further insight on how you might react, consider the real-life circumstances of fellow meeting planners and their association leadership.

THE HOTEL/UNION CONTRACT BARGAINING SITUATION
What Is Happening and How Can You Prepare?

On Oct. 6, 2005, the Capital Chapter of PCMA held a roundtable discussion on the hotel/union contract bargaining situation. The program brought together labor union relations industry leaders with front-line experience in dealing with strikes and other labor challenges to summarize the latest challenges to date, and to advise planners on preparing for various scenarios should their meetings be at a location affected by hotel/union bargaining. The panel consisted of Peter Chatilovicz, an attorney with the firm of Seyfarth Shaw, who was the chief negotiator for the Hotel Association of Washington during negotiations September 2004 - January 2005; Bruce Hamilton, vice president, labor relations for North America, for the Intercontinental Hotels Group, who represented the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA); and John Mazzoni, general manager, Hilton San Francisco, who represented the San Francisco Multi-Employers Group (SFMEG), of which he is president. San Francisco hoteliers have been in protracted union negotiations since spring 2004. The panel was moderated by Victor Robinson, director of meetings and exhibits, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Key points made by the panel included:

• The hotels are not anti-union. There are union hotels in many cities. The main concern of hoteliers is that employees have a secret ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). That has been the process of unionization in the past. The unions want card check neutrality agreements, which are based on an organizing process in which employers agree to forego campaigns, stay neutral, and recognize and bargain with the union, if the union tenders union membership cards signed by a majority of employees.
• The exact contractual issues in each city are different from those in another. In one city, they might be health care, in another, work conditions. "Local issues require local solutions" is the position of AHLA.
• If you are going to a city where negotiations are taking place, your meeting may face disruption. This may include communication by the union to your association and its members asking for a boycott; information picketing, where leaflets explaining the union's position are handed out; mass picketing, which blocks ingress and egress; and other disruptions, which could include trespassing. You might also face a strike, where hotels would have to bring in replacement workers from non-union hotels.
• Successful meetings have been held in cities where negotiations have taken place and are taking place. The hotel industry's commitment to meeting planners is it will do everything in its power to ensure that you and your attendees are not inconvenienced in any way leading up to and throughout the labor negotiations.
• If you are contacted by the union, refer to basic guidelines found on the Convention Industry Council (CIC) Web site, www.conventionindustry.org.
• The key to having as little disruption as possible is to be prepared. Planners should gather information, be proactive, communicate with their members, and work with the hotel staff, including national sales managers, property sales managers, and the property general manager.

The question and answer period indicated that planners? main concern is that their members may not want to cross a picket line. One planner who works for a union association offered another solution: Work with the union. Explain why your association cannot afford to move from the hotel and/or city. Cooperate with the union as well as with the hotel.

THE HOTEL/UNION CONTRACT BARGAINING SITUATION
What Is Happening and How Can You Prepare?

The purpose of this article is to provide planners with information they can use to make intelligent decisions about how to manage their meetings in case of labor disagreements in their destination cities. PCMA and Convene do not take sides with either employers or the union. To that end, Convene interviewed Neal Kwatra, Coordinator for the Department of Strategic Affairs UNITE HERE in Washington, D.C., to learn the labor union perspective.

Convene: Please give a general overview from the union's perspective of labor negotiations - when they take place, who speaks for the members, the relationship between the local and national organization, the relationship between the local leadership and the union members. Also, please comment on the union members working without a contract.

Kwatra: Bargaining takes place at different times and at a different pace from city to city. To give an example from our history, we settled a contract with our Las Vegas employers in 2002 after weeks of intense negotiations, but settled it just before the contract expired. In San Francisco, we've been bargaining on and off for almost 18 months and there's still no end in sight. So there's no "roadmap" per se to negotiations. It varies from year to year and city to city.

There is one common thread throughout bargaining - regardless of city or year - and that's our members at the local level. The myth that persists with respect to our most recent contract campaigns is that the decision to address the industry nationwide was one that came from the top, and that our members at each local are not at all involved in making and driving those decisions. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our members voted overwhelmingly to strike in 2004 in Los Angeles and San Francisco, both by a margin of over 96 percent. One of the main reasons for the strike vote was the employers' insistence that they would not move on a 2006 expiration. In San Francisco, our Local 2 has put a number of alternatives to a 2006 expiration on the table and employers have balked. Our members understand the issues they face on a day-to-day basis better than anyone else. In each city they're the ones that make up the bargaining committees, negotiate all of the terms to their contracts, and eventually vote for the contract.

To your question about members working without a contract, we can only speak to that by highlighting some of what has happened in San Francisco since the contract expired there. Last year in San Francisco, the Multi-Employer Group locked out thousands of our members for five weeks and threatened to take away their health benefits right before the holidays. If not for our members' resolve, the overwhelming community support in San Francisco, and the mayor's participation on our behalf, that lockout may well still be going on today. So to answer your question, when a contract expires, it potentially heightens the likelihood of a labor action in that city - strikes, lockouts, boycotts - and that, undoubtedly has an effect on meeting planners and group customers.

Convene: The American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) has taken the position that local issues require local solutions. Yet I understand the labor unions want to negotiate with chains on a nation-wide basis. Please comment.

Kwatra: Frankly, I find the AHLA's position on "local issues requiring local solutions" to be quite disingenuous. When a hotel company like Hilton, Starwood, or Marriott releases an earnings report, they do not release it on a hotel-by-hotel or city-by-city basis. When they're calculating their revenues or operating income, they do not include line items for individual cities or hotels. Multinational hotel companies look at the financial health of their companies in the aggregate, and they also market their brands worldwide. For example, customers to a Westin hotel in San Francisco expect the same level of service as if they were staying at a Westin in New York.

The point I'm trying to make here is that these hotel companies can't have it both ways. If a customer to a Westin expects the same service nationwide, then the housekeepers that are cleaning Westins all over the country deserve to all be treated with respect and dignity, regardless of where they're working. If a multinational is willing to bring in national representatives to bargain in local markets, and is willing to offset the cost of a labor dispute in one market with profits generated in other markets, then we feel it's only fair to ask them to talk to us together about issues that are common to all North American markets.

Convene: Recently, meeting planners have received calls from union representatives in cities not listed on the UNITE HERE Web site as being scheduled for activity. One example is Seattle. Why is this?

Kwatra: Our experience is that customers more frequently reach out to us than vice versa. Over the 16 months, our staff has been inundated with hundreds of requests from planners and concerned conventioneers. They want more information about our contract negotiations in Los Angeles and San Francisco, particularly about how these contract negotiations will affect any future meetings planned in these cities. They reach out to us because their destination hotels are not providing them the information they need to navigate these difficult situations. Our staff and attorneys have extensive experience dealing with group customers in this context, and by lending our expertise to planners, we fill the vacuum major hotel operators have created.

If a customer is reaching out to our union in a market like Seattle, it is most likely either because the Westin Seattle's contract is expiring in May of 2006, or because the Sheraton Seattle Hotel & Towers is currently under boycott.

Convene: The overwhelming number of meeting planners with whom I have spoken say that their main concern is to respond to members' not wanting to cross picket lines, while still keeping their contractual obligations with the hotel(s). What advice would you give them?

Kwatra: First of all, I'd say that meeting planners should protect themselves by negotiating cancellation clauses, attrition clauses, and damages clauses limited to actual losses that protect them in the event of a labor dispute. Since negotiations in the 2006 cities will affect most of the first-tier meeting and convention markets in some way, this is of critical importance for group customers and meeting planners, and our attorneys have created some helpful meeting planner resources that can be found on www.hotellaboradvisor.info/meetings.asp.

The second thing I would say to meeting planners is that our experience with Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. has been that hotel employers rarely shoot straight with their group customers, and meeting planners ought not rely on the companies for accurate and timely information if they're meeting in one of our 2006 cities. They should instead be in close contact with our union, which has up-to-the-minute information on all affected hotel properties. The best place to get information on this front is www.hotellaboradvisor.info/actionwatch.asp.

LABOR NEGOTIATIONS 101

To learn more about the hotel labor unions and the negotiation process, Sara Torrence, CMP, turned to Ed Rudzinski, general manager of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, and a member of the board of directors of the Washington Hotel Association when union contracts were being negotiated in late 2004 and early 2005.

Convene: Could you provide some general background on the hotel labor negotiating cycle - when contracts are due, the parties involved, and who does the negotiating?

Rudzinski: Union employees in a hotel work under a contract that has a renegotiation date. For those of us in Washington, D.C., the contract for Local 25, UNITE HERE, the union that represents the most workers, ended in September 2004, and a new contract was signed on Jan. 19, 2005. When there is a gap between the end of one contract and the implementation of another, employees work under the terms of the old contract.

In our situation, negotiations for the union hotels are done by management of hotels that are in the "negotiating group" for all hotels. Union hotels that are not in the group have agreed to abide by the contract signed by the "negotiating group."

Negotiation for the hotel employees is carried out by their union representatives. In Washington, D.C., that was Local 25 of the Hotel Employees Union and Local 99, which represents the engineers, painters, and boiler room employees.

Convene: Which employees in a hotel are union employees?

Rudzinski: It depends on the hotel, and the city. There can be as few as one department in a hotel that is represented by the union. In the Marriott Wardman Park, 800 of 1,000 employees are union members. Those excluded are management, sales, accounting, human resources, and several other smaller departments. The employees vote on whether or not their department will be unionized. If the majority of employees in a department vote to be represented by a union, all employees in that department will be represented by the union and will pay union dues.

Convene: How are operations handled on a day-to-day basis in a union hotel?

Rudzinski: Each department has union "leadership" that works with management (in Washington, D.C., the term was formerly "stewards"). The union and hotel management operate under the terms of the contract currently in place, and it is the union leadership's duty to monitor that the terms of the collective bargaining agreement (contract) are being followed. If the contract is adhered to, there are no issues on either side. If there are concerns, the union leadership comes to management to work things out. On a day-to-day basis, things go very well. Grievances (a formal problem resolution process) are usually worked out to everyone's satisfaction. If not, the grievances are arbitrated by the National Labor Relations Board. But that has been rare in my experience.

Convene: When do strikes come about?

Rudzinski: That is up to the unions. Once a contract expires, they can strike against the negotiating hotels, in part or in full. They may not choose the largest hotels, in fact. The unions fund the workers during a strike - but only those workers in the hotels designated for a strike action. Typically, negotiations begin one to two months in advance of the contract deadline.

Convene: What is a lockout? Why would hotel employers lock out union employees?

Rudzinski: A lockout of employees is "the last straw," to force the hands of the union negotiators. It is to break a stalemate, when negotiations break down.

Convene: What was the situation in Washington, D.C. during negotiations? What were the issues?

Rudzinski: There has never been a strike in Washington, D.C. We have always been able to negotiate a new contract before the old one has ended. The unions were asking for "respect and dignity" in their jobs, a two-year contract that would expire in 2006, and improvements in wages and benefits. The hoteliers were concerned about a two-year contract, because 2006 is the same year that contracts expire in San Francisco, New York, and Toronto. We were able to negotiate a contract to everyone?s satisfaction, expiring in 2007. Exact issues of contracts vary from city to city.

Convene: In the threat of a strike, hotels always assure planners that the hotel will bring in replacement workers and will continue "business as usual." Please expand on this.

Rudzinski: The hotels negotiate in good faith with clients to keep the hotel operating. We have an obligation to keep the hotel open. Replacement workers would be called in from non-union hotels within the hotel group. There are actually companies that specialize in bringing in non-union replacement workers, who will work with hoteliers.

Convene: What advice would you give to meeting planners regarding union contracts and the threat of strikes?

Rudzinski: First, know when union contracts are coming due in the city in which you are meeting. If the due date will affect your convention, put some wording in your own contract that the meeting will not be affected. Also, you should know whether or not your members will cross a picket line, or remain neutral in case of a strike. You should also be aware of the position of your speakers, exhibitors, and service providers. Stay aware. Work with your hotel representatives, and you will have a successful event.

Those Who Moved
AFT's Muravchik noted, "Many groups have the option of whether to move or not. The AFT does not. We have clauses in our contracts that directly address labor disputes, not just strikes."

AFT's annual meeting typically has 4,000 to 4,500 attendees, with 3,000 to 3,200 hotel rooms occupied on peak night. AFT had contracted five hotels and the Moscone Center West in San Francisco for its July 2006 convention. "We gave notice on May 23 that if the labor issues were not resolved, we would be forced to withdraw from San Francisco," she said. Since issues were still pending, the meeting was officially pulled out on Aug. 15.

"We advised the hotel management, owners, and the major newspapers of our actions," Muravchik added. In moving the meeting from San Francisco to Boston, she worked with the corporate office of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which has a major presence in Boston, to devise specific language in the force majeure section of the contract addressing specific issues.

Among associations with members sympathetic to union issues is the American Sociological Association (ASA). "Our membership is made up of sociologists who work in various capacities as researchers, teachers, and practitioners. Many are social activists, who take a pro-worker stance," said Janet Astner, meeting services director for ASA. Since the labor issues had not been resolved at the headquarters hotel, the ASA 2006 meeting was moved from San Francisco to Montr?al, Canada. "Our group prefers to meet and sleep 'under one roof,"' Astner explained.

"That will not be the case in Montr?al, where we are holding our sessions at the convention center. However, because of our members' concerns, we had to move.

"Most of our members were relieved with relocation, although some wanted to attend the meeting and support the union workers. Our members love San Francisco, and we have a longstanding partnership with the two hotels we were using. We had an addendum to our 2006 contract that included a rebooking option, if 2006 was the expiration date of new union contracts," Astner added. "After numerous intense discussions over the past year, we are now working with the hotels to reschedule our annual meeting in San Francisco for a future year that is agreeable to all parties involved."

Because of the protracted labor disputes, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) decided to move two of its annual meetings, in 2004 and 2006. The signature event on AAA's calendar, the annual meeting, regularly attracts more than 5,500 attendees, and uses 1,830 guest rooms on peak night in the headquarters and overflow hotels, according to Lucille Horn, director of the meetings department. The meeting is held the week before Thanksgiving "under one roof" in a large hotel.

In 2004, the AAA leadership decided to move the meeting just weeks before the scheduled dates. At the time, the headquarters hotel was engaged in a lockout. A comprehensive membership survey revealed that members would not cross picket lines. The meeting was relocated to Atlanta. But the dates changed to mid-December, rather than the usual November dates. This proved to be a "distressing experience," according to Horn. "Our members couldn't change their schedules. Most of them are academics, and had arranged class coverage for the usual dates. We had barely 700 registrants," she said. "The biggest 'lesson learned,' was that if we are going to change our meeting location and/or dates, we need to do it before the Call for Papers comes out, or before people have made arrangements and bought their plane tickets," she added.

Indeed, the 2004 experience was instrumental in AAA's decision to move from San Francisco to San Jose for its 2006 annual meeting. The uncertainty surrounding the ongoing hotel labor/management dispute was cited as key to the move, according to a media advisory issued by AAA on August 29. "The association is unable to delay the planning and marketing for our 2006 meeting without assurances that there will be no labor strike or conflict during the dates [of the meeting]," said Executive Director Bill Davis. AAA is optimistic that they can return to San Francisco in 2008 and 2012 as scheduled.

Changing meeting dates well in advance, in order to respond to members' educational needs and to effectively publicize the meeting was also a reason that APSA moved its meeting from San Francisco to Philadelphia. "We begin publicizing our meeting more than a year in advance. Many of our members plan their vacations around the annual meeting, bring their families, and stay a full week," Marmor said. "We kept our membership as fully informed as possible regarding the relocation process."

Unfettered access to the meeting was also important to APSA. "Our membership is made up primarily of academics, who look to our annual meeting to address many core aspects of their profession. In addition to the educational sessions, we have more than 150 exhibitors, and a job placement center where employers are looking to fill 700-plus jobs. Full access is vitally important," Marmor added. "The decision to move was difficult, because we always have our largest attendance in San Francisco," she said.

Those Who Stayed Put
The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) held its annual convention in San Francisco in October 2005. Why did they decide to stay?

"First of all, we were approaching record attendance for the meeting," said Sandra Vura Harwood, CMP, director of meetings and conventions for IDSA. "Also, we were not siding with either the hotels or the unions. Our members - physicians and scientists who are looking for cures to the world's greatest scourges - view our meeting as apolitical. The meeting is a vehicle to disseminate the latest scientific findings for the greater good of society. While some of our members may be sympathetic to the union contract situation, all would agree that moving or pre-empting our meeting would negatively impact attendance, thus potentially having much more serious consequences in terms of ultimate patient care. Our leadership trusted the IDSA staff to work through the problem if something happened," Harwood added.

The IDSA convention attracted 5,000 attendees, utilized the Moscone Convention Center, and occupied 3,000 guest rooms on peak night. The headquarters hotel was the San Francisco Marriott, which had reached agreement with its union employees. "The issue for us was the overflow hotel rooms, which comprised 40 percent of our block," said Harwood. "We constantly monitored the situation, and kept in touch with hoteliers. We were assured that should there be a lockout, they would bring in replacement workers. As it turns out, we had a very successful convention with no problems."

The American Red Cross worked closely with its Bay Area Chapter to keep abreast of the labor situation when holding its May 2005 meeting in San Francisco. "They were able to help us to keep our finger on the pulse of the action," said Leslie Zeck, CMP, manager, events and conferences for the organization. "Our meeting usually attracts 3,000 employees and volunteers, occupying 1,800 rooms on peak night. We used two hotels, and the entire Moscone West Convention Center. We canceled with one hotel after trying to reduce the room block to no avail. That property had incidentally not come to agreement with its employees by the time of our meeting. We were assessed damages, but the hotel negotiated with us fairly. We stayed with the headquarters hotel, the Marriott, because it had an agreement in place with the unions, and we knew we would not encounter any work stoppage or problems," Zeck noted. "Our attendees were simply interested in fair negotiations between all parties."

Keeping your members informed and providing options of hotels in which to stay is another strategy. "Generally speaking, our members take neither side in labor disputes," said Sondra Biggs, CMP, director, meetings and conventions, American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). "Nonetheless, we wanted to keep our attendees as fully informed as possible." This communication was important to a convention that attracts more than 15,000 attendees, ranging from physicians, to physician assistants, to nurses. They occupy 5,600-plus rooms on peak night in the numerous hotels contracted.

"We didn't put any particular slant on any of our communications, to heighten alarm or to take sides," Biggs added. Contact with members in hotels still in contract negotiations was especially important. "We sent out an e-mail to all attendees booked in those hotels, advising that there may be boycotts, and giving them the opportunity to be placed in other properties, should room be available," Biggs noted.

"Our housing service worked closely with our registration and housing services manager to keep up to date on that availability," she said.

In addition, AAFP worked closely with the general managers of the affected hotels to prepare a letter to guests regarding the labor situation, and provided links to both the San Francisco Multi-Employers group (SFMEG) and to UNITE HERE Local 2's Web sites.

"In the end, we heard of no problems from any of our members," Biggs said.

Talks in 2006

According to Kathryn Potter, vice president of marketing and communications for the American Hotel & Lodging Association, the following cities (in addition to San Francisco) have contracts coming due for negotiations this year:

Editor's note: The city and hotels of San Francisco are most often used as examples in this article because it was the city on the "front line" during Sara Torrence's research. It is our intention that readers will be able to apply the strategies noted here for any city where labor negotiations or sympathy actions are taking place.