SAN FRANCISCO -- While camera-toting tourists darted up the steps around them, union leaders and their supporters at City Hall today demanded respect for the workers who help the city's tourist industry thrive.

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About 1,400 hotel workers began a two-week strike Wednesday morning in what leaders of UNITE HERE Local 2 called a "measured response" to stalls in contract negotiations with the 14 hotels in the San Francisco Multi-Employer Group (SFMEG).

Four hotels targeted by the strike -- the Argent, Crowne Plaza, Hilton and Mark Hopkins -- are using "contingency plans" to remain open, the SFMEG reported today.

SFMEG spokeswoman Barbara French said today, "October is projected to be the busiest month for San Francisco hotels since before the collapse of the economy and 9/11, so (the strike) is very unfortunate for the city."

Local 2 President Mike Casey, echoing several city and state officials at the City Hall gathering, said the tourism industry rebound in San Francisco has been launched off the backs of room cleaners, bartenders, cooks and other hotel workers who have been "doing two jobs and only getting one paycheck" since post-Sept. 11 layoffs.

Pointing to the rows of painted hearts in Civic Center Plaza, framed by charter buses discharging tourists by the dozen, Supervisor Tom Ammiano found the scene ironic and declared, "Heartbreak Hotel is not the kind of hotel we want!"

"These are not automatons who put your booze in your mini bar," Ammiano said of hotel workers, one of whom took the podium to say he could not afford health care for his three young daughters under the plan SFMEG has proposed.

Casey said today that health care costs, such as employee co-payments that could rise from $10 to $273 per month, are the main sticking point in negotiations.

But Casey and SFMEG leaders agree that the contract term has become a major issue.

The union wants a contract that expires in 2006, when contracts across America also will run out, to gain leverage with national hotel chains.

SFMEG has proposed a five-year contract and even filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the union's alleged insistence on the two-year term.

"The union is saying that there's nothing the hotels could offer that would change their viewpoint on that one issue," French said.

Casey called the complaint "not worth the paper it's written on" because it came from a national organization not at the bargaining table.

French, too, lamented the national overtones of the negotiations, saying, "San Francisco hotels have demonstrated a commitment and an ability to negotiate in San Francisco to benefit San Francisco, San Francisco employees and the union. There is a 10-year track record in San Francisco of the hotels working side by side with the union."

Casey said that amid increasingly consolidated corporate hotel management, coordinated contract expiration is meant to level the playing field.

"The only way we can secure our future is to work together nationwide," Casey said.