With the former Kaplan's Surplus store and the Renoir Hotel both set to become luxury hotels, the intersection of Seventh and Market is definitely changing. Yesterday, the latter project was the scene of a rally that gathered about 50 hospitality workers and community and immigration reform advocates, including representatives from Tenderloin Housing Clinic, ASPIRE, Causa Justa and Jobs With Justice. They gathered to protest the developers of the Renoir Hotel, as well as a controversial federal immigration policy that helped fund the project.
The hotel, built in 1907, was purchased in 2013 by Kor Group, a real estate investment, development and management firm based in Los Angeles. The firm closed the budget hotel in April of that year, and plans to renovate and reopen next winter as the San Francisco Proper hotel, with 135 rooms, three ground-floor "chef-driven" restaurants and a rooftop restaurant and bar offering panoramic views of the city's skyline, according to the latest report by the San Francisco Business Times.
Unite Here Local 2, which represents hospitality industry workers in San Francisco and San Mateo and organized the rally, is protesting Kor Group for refusing to sign the union's standard agreement, a decision that sets it apart from almost all of the new San Francisco hotels to have opened in the past 20 years. The union's research director, Ian Lewis, says that the union regularly meets with hotel developers to negotiate agreements that allow workers to unionize.
Tina Chen, Local 2's secretary-treasurer, discusses the benefits of unionization as an immigrant worker.
Protesters also hoped to raise awareness of the federal government's EB-5 Program, which gives foreign citizens the opportunity to apply for green cards for themselves and their families in exchange for investing $500,000 in a qualifying business or project that creates at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers. Kor Group raised $42 million in EB-5 funds from 84 foreign investors to build the San Francisco Proper, as well as $18 million in taxpayer subsidies.
Local 2 and its allies argue that given the source of its funds and the fact that the vast majority of San Francisco's hospitality workers are immigrants, the Kor Group should be obligated to allow employees to unionize without fear of repercussions, which Local 2 believes will lead to higher-quality jobs for the hotel's future employees. In a statement on the protest, Local 2 said that Kor Group refuses to allow future employees to "organize free of retaliation and intimidation."
"When developers cash in on huge public benefits like this, the least we should do is ensure that their projects lift up struggling communities," Anand Singh, president of Local 2, said in a press release regarding the rally. "The hypocrisy here is profound. A wealthy hotel owner gets special treatment from Congress, but many housekeepers, cooks and dishwashers have to wait years, even decades to secure visas for their families."
Gordon Mar of Jobs With Justice told protestors that he was disgusted by the government's selling of green cards to the highest bidders at a time when "Congress can't find a path to comprehensive immigration reform."
Legislation authorizing the EB-5 Program expires in September, and Congress is expected to enact reforms. As for unionization at the San Francisco Proper hotel, we reached out to both Kor Group and the Proper Hotel group for comment on Local 2's claims and did not receive a response.
