Unions exploit virus fears to serve selfish objectives

The adage says never to let a crisis go to waste. Union leaders are taking it to heart, looking for every opportunity to strong-arm employers in the name of COVID-19 safety. As employers try to stumble back to life, unions want expensive new contracts or government-imposed mandates.

The latest display of crass union opportunism played out in San Francisco, where UNITE HERE, a hospitality workers union, pressed the board of supervisors in July to enact mandates on hotels, convention centers, and other travel and tourism businesses. Among the laundry list of onerous and expensive regulations, hotels must clean all surfaces several times a day — right down to whiteboard markers and erasers in rooms that haven’t been used since the last cleaning.