Political scientists confront real world politics dealing with hotel workers strike

Striking hotel workers rally outside the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown Hotel on Tuesday, July 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Damian Dovarganes/AP

Los Angeles has been at the forefront of this summer’s wave of labor unrest – and it’s creating a political dilemma for a group of political scientists.

The American Political Science Association, or APSA, is holding its annual meeting in Los Angeles this weekend, despite calls from striking hotel workers for conferences to stay away from the city. About 6,000 people were expected to attend.

But the JW Marriott, where the conference was initially set to be held, is one of the dozens of hotels where workers have been staging rolling strikes for weeks. APSA has room blocks at other strike-ready hotels. Thousands of workers at downtown Los Angeles hotels walked off the job on Wednesday, just before the start of the APSA event.

Academics are divided over whether to attend the meeting.

“Now, the membership is polarized,” said Erin Pineda, a professor of government at Smith College. “The battle lines are those who cross pickets and those who don’t.”

In a July 19 letter to APSA executive director Steven Smith, Unite Here Local 11 – the union that represents roughly 15,000 hotel workers – asked the group to cancel their meeting, to put pressure on the hospitality industry to meet their demands for higher wages. Workers have been staging rolling strikes at dozens of hotels since early July, when the union contracts for workers at about 60 hotels expired.

APSA leadership responded the following week, saying the conference would move forward in Los Angeles, but with significant modifications. APSA leaders moved all panels and events…