30-Oct-18 – For weeks, they assembled at downtown hotels and spent the day shouting. Their chants, such as, “No contract, no peace!” were amplified by megaphones and punctuated with whistles, drumming, even banging on pots and pans. The sound echoed against office and residential buildings in the concrete canyons, reaching levels that made conversation, sleep, work – sometimes even thinking – a challenge.

Members of Unite Here Local 1 started their strike on September 7 at 25 hotels and expanded to 26 hotels on September 11. There were settlements and by October 11, they were down to one hotel, Cambria Hotel Chicago Magnificent Mile.

The strike started a week after contracts with about 6,000 hotel workers expired. The union was demanding year-round health insurance for employees laid off during slower winter months.

As patience wore thin and confrontations started happening between the strikers and hotel guests, neighborhood residents, and owners of neighboring businesses, the Chicago Police Department for the most part looked the other way, as part of an agreement between the city and the union. However, when the strikers insisted on making noise near Lurie Children’s Hospital, next door to Cambria Hotel on Superior Street, that’s when police objected and now they are being sued for it.

(Left) Google Street View showing proximity of Cambria Hotel (left) and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, the building at right.

18th district police commander Daniel O’Shea, one of the defendants in a federal lawsuit filed on October 22, was in a “tough situation,” says 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly, caught between complaints coming in by the hundreds and the city’s law department, which urged restraint.

The strike, says Reilly, “created a tremendous disturbance” for residents of River North and Streeterville. In addition to the noise, Reilly says strikers blocked sidewalks and triggered car alarms.

“Obviously, people have a right to protest – it’s their constitutional right,” said Reilly at a Town Hall community meeting on October 24, “but unfortunately we had a situation where the city’s administration cut a deal and thought it was appropriate for folks to make this kind of noise from seven in the morning till past ten o’clock at night.”

The deal was cut on September 12 during a conference call between attorneys for Unite Here Local 1 and attorneys for Chicago Police Department.

According to Dana Pesha-O’Malley, CPD’s assistant general counsel, police agreed not to cite or arrest strikers for noise between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. if noise-making devices were not used between 10:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.

“The city has made every effort to work with lawyers for Local 1 to allow for protest activity to continue, while recognizing countervailing community concerns,” wrote Pesha-O’Malley (right) in a declaration filed in response to the lawsuit.

Constituents who called Reilly’s office for relief from the relentless noise were instructed to call the mayor’s office. The mayor’s office, according to people who tried calling, including this reporter, seemed overwhelmed by the number of complaints and unsympathetic.

Reilly says he and 2nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins appealed to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPD leadership that the city’s noise ordinance be enforced. The pleas, he said on September 12, “have fallen upon deaf ears.”

O’Shea says police in his 18th district “responded to every call,” tried to convince the strikers to keep sidewalks open for people to pass, and issued no more than five citations for noise violations – though the city, he says, has not given police “a straight answer” about whether they can even do that.

The citations are “administrative notices of violation” and do not charge anyone with a crime. A first-time offender would be subject to a fine of $300.

“We were trying to diplomatically get compliance with the strikers,” said O’Shea (left) at the October 24 meeting that was hosted by Streeterville Organization of Active Residents. “It didn’t go so well. They went to their lawyers. Their lawyers went to the city lawyers. And it kind of tied our hands and put us right in the middle of it.”

Complaints by children’s hospital force re-examination of agreement

The truce between strikers and police had to be re-examined on October 17, when staff at Lurie Children’s Hospital complained to police that protest activity was interfering with the operation of their bereavement rooms, where, they explained, “parents of terminally ill children receive devastating news.”

The hospital wanted police to enforce an ordinance prohibiting noise in “Quiet Zones” located specifically near hospitals. It was not the ordinance at the core of the agreement between police and strikers. The city notified the union of the new situation during another conference call.

According to Pesha-O’Malley, “Department of Law attorneys repeatedly stated that the purpose of the call was to alert Local 1 to this new complaint, which presented new and significant community concerns, and to the accompanying request for enforcement of the Quiet Zone ordinances.”

She says city attorneys offered to work with the union to identify areas where protests could be relocated to, outside of the hospital’s Quiet Zone, but Local 1 “refused to discuss any solution that involved relocating out of the Quiet Zone.”

The union says that during the conference call on October 18, city representatives said strikers would be arrested “if the picketer made any sound whatsoever that resulted in a complaint from the hospital.”

They say since that time, strikers have been unable to picket, out of fear of arrest. “They have chanted so quietly that their chants cannot be heard over ambient noise levels.”

Further aggravating the union is music Cambria Hotel has been playing from loudspeakers under its front awning.

Pesha-O’Malley denies the union’s claim that the city told them protestors could not make any noise whatsoever in front of Cambria. She says protests in front of the hotel and Lurie continued, with police issuing no further citations.

Union warned city of strike three days before it started

In its lawsuit, Unite Here Local 1 says they met with city representatives in person on September 4, three days before the strike started, “as a courtesy,” to explain the “messages and mediums” they would be using to publicize their labor dispute. The union insists that its use of bullhorns, drums, chanting, and other sound-producing devices is “peaceful picketing” and ordinances that prohibit them from making noise violate their First Amendment rights.

“Defendants’ unconstitutional actions come at a crucial time,” says the union in its lawsuit. “After more than a month of picketing in front of the Cambria with bullhorns, whistles, loud chanting, drums, and other instruments – all with defendants’ express permission throughout that time – the Cambria and Local 1 will be engaged in collective-bargaining negotiations.”

(Left) Striking Chicago hotel worker holding sign along North State Street.

They are asking the court to prohibit the city from citing strikers “for exercising their protected speech rights on public property.”

On October 22, Unite Here Local 1 asked the court for a temporary restraining order allowing them to make noise in Lurie’s “Quiet Zone.” Pesha-O’Malley says city attorneys were given “a lengthy filing” and informed of the motion with less than two hours’ notice.

However, Senior United States District Judge Harry Leinenweber denied the motion. A status hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for November 6.