President Obama held a press conference Wednesday, April 30, decrying Senate Republicans’ vote against ending a filibuster that has prevented a vote to increase the federal minimum wage.

Among those standing with him that day were four Washington-area UNITE HERE members who work in DC parking facilities: Yoseph Woldehanna, Meklit Mengiste, Amsalu Wube, and Minwuyelet Natneal. Even though their wages are negotiated in their union contracts, the team was proud to have the opportunity to support raising the minimum wage and move all working Americans forward.

Passing an increased minimum wage is necessary and incredibly popular, but the filibuster has become a tool for bringing Congress to a standstill. You can learn more about the filibuster problem here.

Watch the UNITE HERE members backing up the President during his remarks.

Honolulu (April 24, 2014) – With a resounding 159-1 vote, union hotel workers at the Ala Moana Hotel ratified a new contract that will improve the lives of 327 workers and their families and bring Hawai’i a step closer to providing good jobs for everyone.

Hotel management agreed to match the new hotel contract that was settled with the other major Local 5 hotels, like Hilton Hawaiian Village. Under the terms of the new contract, Ala Moana workers will receive an extra wage increase each year until their wages catch up to those in other major hotels.  In addition, management has agreed to make the sick leave provisions at Ala Moana match those in other hotels.

This is the first time in 27 years that the Ala Moana Hotel workers will receive the same pay and benefits that the major hotels get. When totaling the hourly wage, full family medical coverage, and guaranteed pension that these hotel workers receive, that amounts to around $31 an hour. Bringing another hotel up to that level brings Hawaii’s working people closer to achieving $31 for everyone.

“Today, we ratified and voted yes. Everyone is happy and satisfied with the new contract. After so many years, we finally received what we deserve and are being recognized like the other hotels in Waikiki,” says Liza Pintor, who works in the accounting department at Ala Moana Hotel.

Additionally, Ala Moana workers will not have to worry about falling behind in the next contract. Hotel management has already agreed to match everything that Hilton Hawaiian Village workers get in their next contract.

“We are so happy to get exactly what we’ve always wanted,” says seamstress Susanna Ramos, “We now have secure jobs and a secure future.”

The contract will expire in 2023 or at the end of the duration of the next Hilton Hawaiian Village agreement, whichever is longer.

Cindy’s Waterfront Restaurant and cafeteria workers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium have won their first contract with UNITE HERE Local 483! The new union contract provides major improvements, including the largest raises the workers have ever won, a reduction in the cost of healthcare, and workers’ rights.

“The most important thing for me is that by standing together, my co-workers and I won respect and a strong voice at our jobs,” said seven-year barista and organizing committee member Cynthia Corres, “Also, I’m so proud that more of my co-workers and their families will be able to afford good healthcare.”

The workers are employees of Aramark who cook and serve food for thousands of tourists who visit the famous Aquarium.

By Father Clete Kiley

Reposted from Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good

By now, many of us have become familiar with the cold facts and statistics of our nation’s failed immigration system and the immense human suffering it causes.

Twenty-five thousand Central American children cross our border every year trying to be reunited with their families. Ten million people live in our country without authorization and are exposed daily to exploitation. Thirty thousand people are detained, many sent to for-profit private prisons at a cost of over $2 billion annually. Over two million people have been deported in the past six years, breaking up families, disrupting the workforce, and damaging communities. And hundreds of people, adults and children, have died in the desert just outside of this town of Nogales–alone and, too often, nameless.

But in his powerful homily at a Mass where the altar abutted the hideous, rusting thirty-foot fence at the border in Nogales, Arizona, Cardinal Sean O’Malley reminded us that these are not simply statistics. Reflecting on the parable of the Good Samaritan, he challenged every one of us in the United States to find a neighbor in each of the suffering people who risks and, at times loses, his life in the desert in an effort to be reunited with loved ones and find a better life….
Click here to read more.

It’s hard to believe we live in a country that tears families apart. But we do.

Since 2008, close to 2 million aspiring citizens have been deported–ripped away from their families because they moved here to make better lives for themselves and the people they love. More than 200,000 of them are parents, and many of them are parents with children who are American citizens.

Our sister Silvia, a UNITE HERE member from Local 30 in San Diego, is one of these devoted mothers who is in danger of being deported. Her husband was already deported. Their daughter has special needs and relies on Silvia to care for her. Their family health care provider wrote the government a letter asking to keep Silvia in the United States because of the ongoing care her daughter needs.

Please, sign the petition to keep Silvia in the United States so she can make sure her children grow up to be happy and healthy.

Unions are about family–the children for whom you’re putting food on the table, the parents who should be able to retire after decades of work, the co-workers who have your back when you need them. Silvia and her family need us now, too.

Sign the petition if you believe that families should stick together and that we should look out for each other: bit.ly/SisterSilvia. Thank you.

Workers at the Butte Quality Inn and Suites–members of UNITE HERE 427–have ratified a new three-year contract. Included in the new contract is an immediate $.85 per hour wage increase, with a $.25 increase for each of the next two years. The agreement also includes paid vacations and time-and-a-half pay on holidays worked–including St. Patrick’s Day. Though the owner called the workers’ position on paid time off "entitlements" and "not part of our business plan," the workers resisted strongly for most of the past year to bring this win to fruition.

More than 100 workers, advocates, and students launched a boycott on March 27 of a DoubleTree Suites hotel owned by Harvard University.

Starting at the iconic John Harvard statue in the heart of campus, the group marched one mile together to the DoubleTree to rally with other students and members of other local unions.

The DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel Boston-Cambridge, located just across the Charles River from the Harvard’s main campus. The university bought the hotel in January 2005 and reportedly makes $20 million per year from its investment there. Hilton manages the hotel.

Harvard Law School dining hall workers are already members of Local 26, having organized through a fair process in 2011. A supermajority of workers at the DoubleTree signed the petition demanding a fair process to join Local 26 over one year ago, but neither Hilton nor Harvard has yet acted on the workers’ demands.

The boycott has earned the support of the Harvard Undergraduate Council and Harvard Graduate School Council. One student leader with the campus group Student Labor Action Movement wrote a report showing that working conditions at the DoubleTree are far worse than those of direct Harvard employees. Read the report or the campus press.

Tuesday morning, UNITE HERE director of immigration policy Father Clete Kiley joined a delegation of Catholic bishops and other leaders for a Mass of Repentance on the U.S.-Mexico border. Click here to see pictures from the Mass.

The Mass, held along the border wall in Nogales, Arizona, remembered thousands of migrants who have died in the U.S. desert since 1998.

This was the final stop of a weekend of travel along the U.S.-Mexico border for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Migration, as well as other Catholic leaders from both nations, to highlight the human suffering caused by a broken immigration system.

The trip echoes one taken by Pope Francis in July 2013 to the island of Lampedusa, where he spoke about the “globalization of indifference” toward migrants. The island off the Italian coast is a common–and sometimes deadly–destination for migrants from the Middle East, Eritrea, and other parts of Africa who attempt to reach Europe.

The message of the Mass focused on returning urgency to policies of compassion for immigrants. Comprehensive immigration reform remains stalled in Congress, and UNITE HERE has joined the call for pressure on the Obama Administration to halt deportations and reunite separated families.

To learn about the estimates of border deaths and the names of some of the migrants who have been identified, go to the Arizona Recovered Human Remains Project.