Castlewood Country Club Workers to Occupy Pleasanton During March

Union members from UNITE HERE Local 2850 plan to march through Pleasanton tomorrow to bring attention to the two-year anniversary of the worker lockout.

Hundreds of religious leaders, students, union members and people who have participated in the Bay Area's massive Occupy movement will participate.

The march will begin around 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Saturday, starting at at the corner of Main Street and Bernal Avenue. It will snake through Pleasanton along First Street/Sunol Boulevard and then onto Castlewood Drive between Foothill Road and Pleasanton-Sunol Road toward the country club.

Organizers said in a statement that they're doing this to protest the golf club's two-year lockout of its food service staff, in light of growing inequality throughout the country.

to read about past country club protests.

A protest this June led to the arrest of 24 people for blocking Castlewood Drive during a golf tournament. They were taken in for trespassing, then released. 

Alameda County Sheriff’s Office deputies showed up that June day, backed by deputies in riot gear, with California Highway Patrol and Pleasanton police officers standing by. Arrested protesters went quietly as they were hauled off into a waiting sheriff’s office bus.

The picketers caused some traffic congestion as cars and golf carts carrying members and their guests to the four-day tournament tried to get past them. There was at least one close call where a car almost hit a golf cart.

“I find it disturbing,” said David Ashburn, a guest at the club that day. “I think they are trying to make a point. (But) it’s disturbing the peace.”

About 60 employees of the club — waiters, janitors and others — were locked out of the country club on Feb. 25, 2010, in a dispute over health care costs.

Last August, according to the statement, the General Counsel of the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint charging that Castlewood has maintained an unlawful lockout “in order to deny the locked out employees the right to return to their former positions of employment because the locked out employees joined and/or supported the union, and to discourage employees from engaging in union activities.”

An ongoing hearing on the case is expected to conclude March 1, according to the statement.