Striking Gardeners Miss Jobs : Disneyland Hotel Group’s Walkout Tough on Feelings

Luis Amezcua and his tiny group of co-workers take pride in caring for the exotic plants and maintaining the immaculate landscaping throughout the grounds of the 67-acre Disneyland Hotel, and they feel like they are part of a family of workers there.

It’s not false pride, either. Amezcua has been helping to tend to the chores of watering, planting, trimming, cleaning and nurturing the tropical setting for 14 years--and he’s one of the youngsters. Others have been there from 15 to 22 years. One maintenance gardener who worked on the original landscaping 30 years ago retired with a big company-sponsored party last month.

That kind of longevity and attachment to other workers is what makes it so emotionally difficult for the 17-member gardening group that went on strike Sept. 4.

“It’s our first time on strike, and it’s bad,” said Amezcua, 58, an Anaheim resident, talking about the breach in 30 years of usually amicable relations between the hotel and the Laborers International Union of North America, Local 652. Some of the other four unions at the hotel, however, have struck previously.

‘Lot of Friends’

“We have a lot of friends in there. I miss them,” said Julien Arroyo, 51, of Santa Ana, a 20-year employee now carrying a striker’s placard.

Picketing all day at the hotel’s five entrances would be an impossible task, the strikers readily acknowledge, without daily help from a handful of Local 652’s 5,000 members. About 100 union members joined the picket lines in an orderly rally Friday night to show support for the small band of gardeners.

Even so, the strike is starting to take its toll on the tiny group.

Fermin Morales-Chavez, 52, of Santa Ana, a 15-year employee, said he has a $725 mortgage payment coming up soon, and his wife was just laid off from her job. The couple have three teen-age children, he said.

Antonio Gonzalez, 33, of Anaheim, who has maintained the hotel’s grounds for 10 years, was determined to stay on strike, but nevertheless was worried about making rent and car payments. “It’s bad when you don’t have a job,” said the father of two youngsters.

“My wife was nervous about going on strike,” Amezcua said. “But what are you going to do if you don’t have a job?”

Hobson’s Choice

Amezcua was referring to what he and his fellow strikers believe is a sort of Hobson’s choice--taking what is offered or nothing at all-- given to them by the Wrather Corp., owner of the hotel, as their contract expired Aug. 31.

Corporate negotiators are insisting on a contract provision that would allow the hotel to engage outside contractors to handle the gardening, the gardeners said. The result, they believe, would be layoffs as their jobs were taken over by outsiders.

In short, the gardeners believe they can lose their jobs now by going on strike or lose them later by signing a contract containing that provision.

Ric Morris, the hotel’s director of personnel and labor relations, disputed the contention. He pointed out that when four of the 17 gardeners crossed picket lines to return to work, the hotel reacted by removing four workers from the outside contractor’s force that it hired for the duration of the strike.

“We have let (the strikers) know that their jobs are still here,” he said. “We have not permanently replaced them.”

Morris also acknowledged the closeness of the hotel’s employees.

“We’re like a family,” Amezcua said. “But we want to have the security. Our jobs are paramount.”

Nearly 1,300 of the 1,500 hotel employees belong to one of five unions, ranging from the 900-member hotel-restaurant workers union to the group of five painters. But only about 30 or 40 hotel-restaurant workers honored picket lines, at least at the beginning of the strike.

The problem, union officials said, is that the larger unions have no-strike clauses in their contracts that inhibit members from crossing picket lines set up by other unions.

Arroyo figures the strike will last a month, “maybe longer,” but he insists the strikers “will hold out” until a contract is signed.