Sit-In at S. Korean Consulate Protests Hotel’s Labor Policies

Eight union activists protesting job losses at the Wilshire Plaza Hotel were arrested for trespassing Thursday during a sit-in at the South Korean Consulate, authorities said.

The arrests came during a two-hour standoff between police and about 300 protesters upset about job losses at the hotel since the Bang family of South Korea bought the 394-room hotel from Hyatt.

Union officials said the new owners, who were not bound by an existing union contract when they acquired the hotel in January, had rehired only 25 of 175 union employees.

The demonstration snarled rush-hour traffic for miles along Wilshire Boulevard in the Mid-City area.

“We are insisting that the Korean government get involved and exert pressure on the hotel’s owners,” said Maria Elena Durazo, president of Local 11 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union.

She said the management’s actions “are in contradiction to what Los Angeles needs economically and racially after the unrest.”

Union officials said most of the workers who lost their jobs are Latino.

An official at the consulate said the dispute had nothing to do with the government.

“We think the current labor dispute should be settled by the relevant sides in accordance with U.S. labor law,” said the official, who declined to give his name.

Chris Burrows, a lawyer for the hotel, said management had violated no law.

“We feel confident that we haven’t made any unlawful terminations,” Burrows said.

But Byron Kohn, a lawyer with the Los Angeles office of the National Labor Relations Board, said the hotel had “carefully and selectively hired a minority of former union members after they assumed ownership--a violation of the law.”

Maids who had earned an average of $6.70 an hour when represented by Local 11 are now earning $5.20 an hour, union spokesman Jeff Stansbury said.

The dispute will be heard by an administrative law judge in Los Angeles next month.