A mass hotel workers’ strike may disrupt attendance at one of the largest political-science conferences of the summer.
The American Political Science Association’s annual meeting is scheduled for August 31 to September 3 at the J.W. Marriott, which is among the hotels in Los Angeles where workers are on strike. Unite HERE Local 11, the union representing J.W. Marriott’s workers, in July called on APSA to cancel or relocate its conference. The union has been negotiating for better pay since April.
More than 1,000 people signed onto an open letter calling on the association to honor the union’s wishes.
In late July, the association acknowledged the union’s request but said that canceling the event would be financially devastating and that relocating it entirely was “not possible.” The association said it had “underrepresented scholars, scholars from the Global South, and nontenured scholars” in mind when deciding not to cancel the meeting.
“The decision about how to proceed is a difficult one, and we recognize that any decision will disappoint many members,” the statement read. In response, some political scientists said that the association’s statement “does little to resolve the uncertainty” and called on the association to move the meeting online.
This week, APSA stated that it is working to relocate over 400 panels from the J.W. Marriott to the Los Angeles Convention Center. “The APSA is standing with labor,” the statement read, adding that outright cancellation of the meeting would cost the association $2.8 million and that moving it online was not feasible.
Some APSA members said the association should go further.
“APSA hasn’t committed to fully taking all the events and panels out of the Marriott, and they still allow panelists who choose to stay in the Marriott to do so,” said Sidney A. Rothstein, an assistant professor of political science at Williams College, in Massachusetts, and co-chair of the APSA’s Labor Politics group, which authored the open letter and the response. “I don’t know if skepticism is the right word, but I find it hard to believe that they’re going to be able to move all of these events to a different venue on Labor Day weekend in LA.”
APSA did not respond to a request for comment from The Chronicle.
Thea Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College, in Rhode Island, has attended APSA’s annual conferences since she started her career. This year, she’s staying home.
“I won’t cross the picket line,” Riofrancos said.
Even leaders within APSA protested the conference’s continuation. Angélica María Bernal and Elva Orozco Mendoza, co-chairs of the Foundations of Political Theory section, the largest such group within APSA, said they were dismayed by APSA’s original announcement.
“We not only reject this statement but also find it personally upsetting as a rationale for moving forward with an in-person stance” read the statement they issued. “APSA Council’s statement and lack of moral leadership leaves us now in a vacuum of uncertainty and frankly for a section as large as ours, in an impossible logistical mess.”
“Given APSA’s lack of leadership, we stand in protest with workers and will no longer be available to provide our continued free labor to support a resolution we find deeply disappointing and manipulative of Global Southern scholars and graduate students,” the pair added, encouraging scholars who want to move their panels online to contact APSA directly.
Crossing the picket line would not only weaken the fight for hotel workers but fundamentally go against the ideals of political solidarity.
Though the association said canceling the meeting would hurt junior scholars, some members don’t agree. Alyssa Battistoni, an assistant professor of political science at Barnard College, said abstaining from APSA wouldn’t make a significant career dent.
“I don’t think going to APSA, even in this job market, is a make or break,” Battistoni said. “There’s a lot of other venues to network and meet colleagues. APSA is an important one, but it’s not the only one.”
This isn’t the first time APSA has faced external disputes with a conference’s location. In 2005, the organization relocated a future meeting due to a hotel workers’ strike in San Francisco. But in 2008, APSA decided to hold its 2012 conference in New Orleans, though the association’s LGBTQ members disapproved of the location because of an anti-gay marriage amendment that was passed by Louisiana voters in 2004.
Members like Joe Lowndes, a political-science professor at the University of Oregon, said crossing the picket line would not only weaken the fight for hotel workers but fundamentally go against the ideals of political solidarity.
“As political scientists, we should understand how power works. We are in a position to help strengthen the hand of workers,” Lowndes said. “We are people who study power, institutions, social movements, and political economy. These are things we should understand when they happen right in front of us in the real world.”
Lowndes said that hotel workers make conferences like APSA possible. And with workers fighting for an affordable cost of living and safe working conditions, solidarity is crucial.
“These people are just trying to protect their livelihood and their ability to live,” he said.
Riofrancos, who specializes in social movements, said this conference comes at an important moment in the United States labor movement. Despite decades of diminishing power for organized labor, there’s been an uptick in union action and work stoppages.
Riofrancos said APSA needs to acknowledge the underlying issues motivating the strike, properly enact solidarity, and be more sympathetic to affected workers.
“We’re in a general moment of relative salience and visibility of the labor movement in American media, political consciousness, and in public support for workers,” Riofrancos said. “It’s interesting for a professional conference to act as if that’s not the case, in a way without sensitivity.”