Hotel’s New Owner Cited for Labor Violations : Employment: The NLRB says the firm refused to rehire workers in a bid to oust union sympathizers at Wilshire Plaza. A hotel spokesman denies illegal practices.

The National Labor Relations Board has cited the South Korean owners of the Wilshire Plaza Hotel for violating U.S. labor laws by refusing to rehire the majority of the hotel’s 175 workers in an alleged bid to rid themselves of union sympathizers.

The board is also seeking an order requiring the hotel’s owners, the Koreana Hotel Co., to negotiate with the hotel employees’ union. A hearing before a federal administrative law judge to resolve the issues has been set for Oct. 21.

In a 12-page finding, the NLRB said the hotel company “deliberately and selectively refused to hire former employees of the Hyatt Wilshire (the original name of the hotel) . . . in order to attempt to avoid its obligation to recognize the union as the exclusive collective bargaining representative.”

The federal board also charged that hotel employees assaulted a union representative during attempts to distribute leaflets and promised another employee that “he would be hired if he would agree not to participate in picketing.”

Company officials denied the findings, saying they represented only the union’s side of the argument.

Union officials presented the NLRB’s findings Tuesday during a rally in front of the hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, an event attended by several dozen former hotel employees and City Councilman Michael Woo.

Woo said the conflict between the hotel’s South Korea-based owners and the predominantly Latino work force represented by the union is exacerbating tensions in a city still struggling with the effects of recession and riots. “When a company comes into this city and buys a hotel, it’s important to play by the rules,” he said. “In the case of the Koreana, they are not playing by the rules.”

Angela Oh, a Korean-American attorney who has frequently spoken out on the responsibility of South Korea-based companies in Los Angeles to be sensitive to surrounding communities, said the hotel’s actions have hurt efforts by Korean-American merchants to repair strained relations with the city’s black and Latino communities.

“We cannot look our neighbors in the face with any dignity, with any self-respect,” Oh said. “This is about human relations and not just about profit. If you do the human relations right, there’s a lot of money to be made.”

The Koreana Hotel Co. purchased the former Hyatt Wilshire in December, 1991. The company brought in a new set of workers, hiring fewer than a fifth of the hotel’s former employees. The practice, which is legal, is often used to eliminate unionized work forces.

Maria Elena Durazo, president of Local 11 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, said the hotel’s refusal to rehire its former employees is “no less than economic and physical violence against predominantly Latino immigrant workers and their families.”

Durazo added that “a company like this must be made to understand that this city and its leaders will not tolerate this reckless conduct.”

Alan Barmaper, director of sales and marketing for the Wilshire Plaza, discounted the NLRB’s findings, saying they were based on unsubstantiated union allegations.

“We’re not an anti-union hotel,” he said.

The Koreana Hotel Co. is owned by the Bang family of South Korea, which also has a controlling share of Chosun Ilbo, the largest daily newspaper in that country.

Barmaper said the vast majority of the hotel’s former employees never applied to be rehired when the Wilshire Plaza was sold.

“We tried to hire them back. We gave them priority,” Barmaper said. “There are now more people working here than before. We’re enhancing the economy, not committing economic violence.”