Pope Leo XIII, in his 1891 encyclical "Rerum Novarum," wrote: "Now as concerns the protection of corporeal and physical goods, the oppressed workers, above all, ought to be liberated from the savagery of greedy men, who inordinately use human beings as things for gain. Assuredly, neither justice nor humanity can countenance the exaction of so much work that the spirit is dulled from excessive toil and that along with it the body sinks crushed from exhaustion."

This has been the dilemma for immigrant workers in the last few decades. Many corporations have hired immigrants whom they consider "docile," and work them to the bone.

For the past 20 years, immigrant workers in the hotel industry have been organizing themselves despite great odds and opposition from employers, family and friends to speak up and ask for fairness and a living wage.

On July 1, more than 2,000 workers from the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (UNITEHERE Local 11) voted at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the center of our Catholic community, for a better shake. They overwhelmingly turned down an unfair employer proposal. Why? Their faith and their conscience told them to.

In 1894, Pullman Railroad Workers, many of whom were African American, stood up to the railroad company and asked for fairness. They were greeted with violence and intimidation.

Today, the hotel workers will face harassment and intimidation. Some hotels have already put the workers' jobs out to the public. The workers want fairness and fair negotiations. The Los Angeles Hotel Employers Council may be planning a lockout.

To quote Dorothy Day: "In the labor movement every [work stoppage] is considered a failure, a loss of wages and man power, and no one is ever convinced that understanding between employer and worker is any clearer or that gains have been made on either side; and yet in the long history of labor, certainly there has been a slow and steady bettering of conditions."

The workers of UNITEHERE are devout Catholics from Catholic parish communities such as St. Thomas, St. Vincent, St. Paul and Blessed Sacrament. They are people of prayer and love of their church, their bishop and their pope.

I stand with them in "solidarity," a word that is close my heart. As a St. Paul High School student in Santa Fe Springs, "solidarity" was the word I heard loud and clear coming from a Catholic country, Poland, the home of Pope John Paul II.

In "Laborem Exercens" (1981), Pope John Paul II declared that workers have "the right of association, that is to form associations for the purpose of defending the vital interests of those employed in the various professions. These associations are called labor or trade unions" (n. 20).

I remind the Catholic faithful of the wonderful opportunity to stand with the workers. Pray for them, stand with them and, the next time you're at the Westin Bonaventure, Hyatt Regency L.A., Hyatt West Hollywood, Millennium Biltmore, Sheraton Universal, Westin Century Plaza, St. Regis, Wilshire Grand or Regent Beverly Wilshire, bless them.

Father Mike Gutierrez is pastor of St. Anne Church in Santa Monica, a board member of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), and president of priests in Hispanic Ministry.