55 Pro-Union Activists Arrested at Downtown Hotel

About 55 pro-union activists were arrested late Thursday afternoon on charges of illegal assembly after they created a human blockade in front of the downtown non-union New Otani Hotel and Garden.

The demonstrators, who want the hotel to recognize a hotel workers union as the employees’ bargaining agent, handcuffed themselves to a flat-bed truck in the middle of the intersection of 1st and Los Angeles streets and tied up rush-hour traffic for nearly two hours.

The demonstration marked a major escalation in a two-month boycott of the non-union hotel by Local 11 of the Hotel Employers and Restaurant Employees Union, which for two years has demanded recognition from the hotel as the workers’ bargaining agent.

In recent weeks, union supporters have picketed at lunch time in front of the New Otani to encourage potential patrons to boycott the hotel and its restaurants.

The labor dispute has pitted the Japanese-owned hotel against the union supporters, many of whom are Latino.

Kenji Yoshimoto, the New Otani’s executive vice president and general manager, called Thursday’s demonstration “a brazenly cynical publicity ploy.”

While the union is demanding immediate recognition, hotel officials say they would prefer that workers vote on union representation in an election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board. In recent years unions have contended that such elections are time-consuming and allow management to intimidate workers.