Bay Area May Day workers’ marches, strike set

Yolanda Barron Carmona commutes 45 minutes from her home in Oakland to her hotel housekeeping job in Emeryville during the week.

Though the drive is taxing, Carmona said she had no choice because hotel jobs closer to her home don’t allow union representation for workers — an important factor for her.

Carmona, a 51-year-old immigrant from Mexico, said she felt more respected by hotel management after she signed on with a union.

Yet after lunch Monday, Carmona intends to exercise one of the advantages of being a union member. She plans to

walk out of work after lunch to join thousands of hotel staff, restaurant employees, nurses, teachers and others in the Bay Area in a May Day strike calling for workers’ and immigrants’ rights.

“All immigrants — whether we are from Mexico or (are) Muslims or Asian immigrants — we should be able to work freely and in peace, and we shouldn’t be harassed by immigration,” said Carmona, who’s a permanent resident living legally in the U.S. and has lived in Oakland for 17 years.

Carmona and about 60 other hotel workers from Oakland and Emeryville will gather at Mandela Parkway and Yerba Buena Avenue in Oakland from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m., to demand sanctuary workplaces and to tear down a prop wall that symbolizes the wall that President Trump wants to build along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Sanjay Garla, the vice president of the Service Employees International Union United Service Workers West, said the annual nationwide strike is expected to be larger than it has been in the past decade because of Trump’s rhetoric on immigration. The biggest turnout is expected to be in Los Angeles, where workers will march from MacArthur Park to Grand Park.

“Immigrants’ rights and worker rights in the low-wage service industry are one and the same thing,” said Garla, whose organization represents 45,000 workers in California. “And what our membership is really looking at is the attacks on immigrants — we feel it is a direct attack on the strength of working people as well.”

In San Francisco, a protest outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office is scheduled for 8 a.m. Monday, followed by a gathering at 11 a.m. at Justin Herman Plaza, and from there a march to the Civic Center at noon.

Mayor Ed Lee is planning to participate in the march.

“We cannot have our residents living in the shadows, fearful to go to work, enroll their children in schools or seek medical assistance,” Lee said in a statement to The Chronicle. “Despite the misguided rhetoric coming from Washington, D.C., we will continue to lead the way and fight for our immigrant communities.”

For the first time, leaders from Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations will participate in the strike to call for better working conditions that are pollution and hazardfree.

Miya Yoshitani, the executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network in Richmond, said the organization’s members view the fight for clean and healthy working conditions as part of its push for environmental justice.

The organization represents many factory workers, she said, who plan to meet at 3 p.m. at Fruitvale Plaza in Oakland for a march to San Antonio Park, where they will hold a rally. Employees of the Oakland Coliseum and Oracle Arena complex, including janitors, security guards and other service workers, will join them, Garla said.

Lawyers will be on deck at marches throughout the country to assist workers who fear retaliation from their employers, said Alan Benjamin, a retired board member for the San Francisco Labor Council and May Day coordinator, although most employers, including Facebook and Google, are supporting their employees’ decision to strike.

A May Day strike and march is also planned for 1 p.m. at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, 1700 Alum Rock Ave. in San Jose.

The San Francisco and Oakland unified school districts are planning to keep schools open for May Day and will rearrange staffing needs should teachers walk out, according to school officials.

Carmona said her hope is to show the Trump administration that immigrants are an important part of the working force in the U.S.

“Immigrant workers should not be harassed, and there should be dignified work for immigrants,” she said.