Parent Union Takes Over at Troubled Hotel Local

After years of internal racial strife and amid charges of election fraud, Southern California’s largest hotel workers union local has been taken over by its parent international union.

The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union installed Herman (Blackie) Leavitt, former regional director of the union in Los Angeles, as trustee of Local 11, which has about 13,500 active members.

Under the trusteeship, the local’s affairs will be run by Leavitt and all current officers have been stripped of their positions.

Local 11 could become an important force in the Southern California labor movement because the hotel and restaurant industries are growing and the potential for increased unionization is significant.

However, Local 11, headquartered in downtown Los Angeles, has been fractured for years by strife between Scotty Allan, the long-time head of the local, and the predominantly Latino membership--many of whom are recent immigrants--who complained that there was no opportunity for them to participate in the union.

Translations Required

In January, 1986, a U.S. district judge in Los Angeles ruled that Local 11 must provide Spanish translations at its monthly membership meetings. Allan appealed the decision, and the case is pending before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Membership of the local has dwindled by about 4,000 in the last three years as little organizing was attempted, workers at a Holiday Inn in Hollywood voted to decertify the union, some hotels reduced their staffs, old unionized restaurants closed and several new hotels opened operating on a non-union basis.

This year, two groups of candidates opposed to Allan ran for offices in the local. Both of those slates filed federal court lawsuits in February, asserting that they were not given enough time to disseminate their positions to the members, but they waged spirited campaigns nonetheless.

Late last week, the pot boiled over when Local 11 officials impounded the ballots, charging that members of the slate organized by former union representative Maria Elena Durazo had stuffed ballot boxes and committed other illegal acts. Allan and Dorothy Randazza, who headed the other opposition slate, asserted that Durazo’s group had committed improper acts, a charge she and other members of her group vociferously denied.

In response, Durazo slate members filed suit in U.S. District Court here Friday demanding that the ballots be counted as scheduled and that the top vote-getters be installed in office. Their request was denied, but a further hearing on the matter has been scheduled April 20. In the meantime, the ballots are being held by the American Arbitration Assn.

Allan Resigns Friday

Also on Friday, Allan decided to resign, and the local’s executive board asked the international to put the local in trusteeship. On Monday, Leavitt, the second-highest official in the international, stepped in as trustee, an ironic development since he and Allan have been publicly critical of each other for years.

Tuesday afternoon, an unhappy group of Local 11 members who are part of the Durazo organization met to plan further moves. They charged in interviews that the international was attempting to frustrate the will of the membership.

“We know we won the election,” asserted Guadalupe Gloria Diaz, a waitress at the Los Angeles Hilton who was a candidate for secretary-treasurer, the top position in the local. “We want the ballots to be counted.”

“We organized very well, and we’re able to run the union very well,” said Eddie Ramirez, a waiter at the Bonaventure who ran for organizing director.

But it appears unlikely that the ballots will be counted soon or that the Durazo slate will be running the local for some time. Leavitt said in an interview that he had never seen so many irregularities in the conduct of a union election in his 43 years in the labor movement. He said another election will not be held until the situation in the local has stabilized.

Trusteeships, which are supervised by the U.S. Labor Department, frequently last 18 months. But Leavitt emphasized in an interview that he hopes the the international’s stewardship of the local will be as brief as possible. He said he has every intention of rebuilding the local, a predecessor of which he joined in 1944 while working as a bartender at the Date Room, then an Alvarado Street saloon.

Bilingual Assistants

To further that effort, Leavitt has installed two of the union’s best young organizers, Miguel Contreras and Bill Granfield, both of whom are bilingual, as his assistants. They said their first task is to restore a sense of unity in the local by developing a much broader base of participation. And they made it clear that they are planning to hire some new people to work as business agents and shop stewards.

“We’re looking for good bilingual people who will help rebuild this union from the ground up,” Contreras said. “Our doors are open to anyone who will commit themselves to the labor movement. We’re here to meet the needs of the membership.”

Granfield said “union action committees” at the local’s 160 work sites will be formed soon. He also said the local will begin an active program to help its members, many of whom are undocumented aliens, cope with provisions of the new immigration law.