The State - News from Aug. 18, 1986

The French-owned Hotel Meridien in San Francisco has been charged with violating federal labor laws--and its executive chef accused of threatening to kill an assistant chef for union activism--in several civil complaints filed by the National Labor Relations Board. A hearing has been set for Sept. 22 before an administrative law judge. The hotel’s largest union, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 2, also has staged protests outside the city’s French Consulate over its refusal to intervene in what it views as a labor dispute. The union claims that employees at the hotel, which is owned by Air France, are punished for union activity, and that Joel Guillon, the executive chef, told assistant chef Grant Schumann that “you’ll be dead within a week to two weeks.” A lawyer for the hotel denied all charges, and said the chef was merely paying a friendly sick call on his assistant at the time of the alleged threat and even took him an apple torte.