The shooting death last week of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson exposed a deep vein of anger toward private health insurance providers. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, frustration over the cost of insurance is fueling a prolonged hotel worker strike that threatens to upend the city’s slowly recovering tourism industry.
Nearly three months into a strike against the city’s major hotels by a union representing some 2,500 workers, both sides say a deal is nowhere close.
The work stoppage has blemished key parts of Union Square and the Financial District during the holiday season, as tourists and shoppers have had to navigate clamorous protests and tension spilling onto the streets.
In the latest escalation, the striking workers of the Unite Here Local 2 union have called on J.P. Morgan to cancel its 2025 Healthcare Conference, slated for Jan. 13-16. The confab, which kicks off the city’s annual event calendar, is set to take place at the Westin St. Francis, one of six hotels affected by the strike.
According to the union, the timing of the event is symbolic as the cost of health insurance is at the heart of the impasse: Workers want to keep their existing plan, while hotel owners say it is getting too expensive to maintain.
The striking workers service nearly 30% of San Francisco’s full-service hotel rooms. They say that if the hotels lack sufficient staff to execute a successful conference, the event should be canceled.
The union has used militant language in public communications about the healthcare event, which brings thousands of professionals from the pharma, biotech, and health industries to downtown San Francisco for meetings and presentations.
“The J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference represents the very worst of the healthcare industry,” Unite Here Local 2 President Lizzy Tapia said in a statement. “The healthcare industry’s greed has come back to bite them, because they’ve caused such a huge strike that they can’t hold their conference successfully in San Francisco this year.”
The strike would have started earlier, Tapia said, but union members wanted to reciprocate Salesforce’s commitment to the city by staffing up for the company’s Dreamforce conference in September, which drew more than 45,000 visitors.
Union members working at the various Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott hotels in the city have a healthcare plan that is jointly governed with their employers, so the employees have a say on available providers and the price of premiums and co-payments.
The union, along with hotel owners and hospitality experts, agree that relative to most other private plans, San Francisco’s hotel workers enjoy some of the most generous benefits in the country. Full-time workers, for example, can cover their entire families for a low premium, and co-pays for prescription medicine are capped.
“We get it’s expensive,” said Ted Waechter, a spokesperson for Unite Here Local 2. “But what’s happening in San Francisco is ideological. We think it is merited that the city’s workers have set the standard for the rest of the nation.”
In September, more than 10,000 hotel workers in 10 other U.S. cities — including San Jose, Boston, and Honolulu — also went on strike. Since then, all but San Francisco have negotiated new labor deals that include pay raises and “preserved or improved” healthcare. But since the cost of healthcare in San Francisco is higher, a deal in the city has proved elusive, Waechter said.
According to the union, the latest proposal from the hotel owners — who are negotiating as a bloc — involves maintaining the current health plan for existing employees, while offering a separate plan, negotiated solely by the hotels, to new hires, creating a two-tiered system. That is a nonstarter, Waechter said, as colleagues with “better healthcare” can be targeted for cuts.
Michael D’Angelo, head of labor relations for Hyatt Americas, confirmed that a “no-cost” healthcare package would be maintained but said the bloc is proposing “an alternative to the current health fund that is affected by escalating costs.”
Visitors arriving at the Westin find dozens of hotel workers picketing at the entrance to the steady beat of drums and chants screamed into megaphones. Inside, guest services have been reduced or cut, online reviews suggest.
“The safety and security of guests remains a top priority,” D’Angelo said. “We have contingency plans in place to minimize the impact on hotel operations related to strike activity and are also continuing to work with authorities in an effort to ensure secure access to the hotel.”
Thompson’s killing has put health insurance in the headlines, but it has been “front and center” for the union since the beginning of the strike, Waechter said, adding that the group reached out to J.P. Morgan in September to warn organizers that the work stoppage could disrupt the conference.
A spokesperson for J.P. Morgan declined to comment. The company has not announced any changes to its conference.
Thompson’s death, which authorities are considering a targeted assassination, has also raised alarm bells for health insurance companies seeking to protect top executives. One major company reached by Endpoints News said its top executives travel with a security contingent.
“Some of these companies are responsible for this strike,” Waechter said. “They’ve jacked up prices so much that the hotels don’t want to pay anymore. They created this huge problem.”