UNITE HERE Local 11 advocates for improvements to housing, transportation, and the environment in our communities. The union mobilizes our members to hearings to speak in favor of initiatives that serve their needs and to oppose ones that threaten access to housing, force workers into longer commutes through worsening traffic, or damage the environment we live in. Our members often live in neighborhoods with the least green space, and we believe that our governments must use every inch of open space to promote organic, native landscaping and healthy ecosystems.

There is nothing new about unions advocating for environmental protections. UNITE HERE Local 11 has roots in the movement of the United Farm Workers union of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, who led multiple efforts to ban pesticides used on grapes and strawberries and called for testing grapes in stores to see if they were contaminated with poisonous residues. Environmentalists stood with workers in creating OSHA, the first agency dedicated to worker health and safety on the job. The UAW and Steelworkers sponsored the first Earth Day in 1970 and supported some of the first environmental laws including the National Environmental Policy Act, the inspiration for the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).