Chanting, “Holiday Inn, shame on you!” hundreds of Minnesota AFL-CIO convention delegates marched through downtown St. Paul to support workers fighting to keep their jobs and union at the hotel.

Union marshals and uniformed police escorted the union members as they filled the sidewalks and headed toward a noontime rally Tuesday. Traffic was blocked in front of the Holiday Inn Rivercentre to accommodate the crowd.

“Union jobs built this place . . . there oughta be union jobs inside,” U.S. Senator Mark Dayton, one of several speakers, declared. He was applauded with cheers and chants of “No justice, no peace!”

The hotel, formerly a Days Inn, was recently renovated to take advantage of its location across from the new Xcel Energy Center. It reopened as a Holiday Inn, but management refused to rehire any of the Days Inn employees or honor a contract with Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Local 17.

The Days Inn owners took on a new majority partner before they switched to a Holiday Inn franchise, and they maintain they are a new company not bound by the union contract.

Presidents of central labor councils from around the state also addressed the rally. They included Connie Dammen, Rochester; Alan Netland, Duluth; Shar Knutson, St. Paul; and Dick Johnson, Minneapolis.

Local 17 is urging people to boycott the Holiday Inn Rivercentre and its restaurant, Mississippi Mud Rivertown Grill.