The Open-Space Vote Bears the Union Label

The machinations of Los Angeles politics are seldom a thing of beauty, but they are a source of wonder. Consider how a Little Tokyo labor dispute helped persuade the City Council to provide a reprieve for an endangered plant that grows about 20 miles from downtown.

The hotel is the New Otani. The plant is the slender-horned spineflower. It grows almost exclusively in the sandy, rocky Big Tujunga Wash, the latest front in a war between a Japanese conglomerate and a hotel workers union.

Environmentalists needed 10 votes Tuesday to kill a plan for an 18-hole golf course in Big Tujunga that had already won Planning Commission approval. They got exactly 10, angering many local residents and merchants while pleasing many others. Golf interests may now either proceed with threats to sue the city for essentially seizing the land or may reconsider their rejection of a $3.5-million offer from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to preserve the land.

These 10 votes weren’t all cast by wildflower huggers. No, the slender-horned spineflower owes its life to Local 11 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union.

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The long story that David Koff tells begins more than two decades ago in Little Tokyo. Allow for the fact that Koff, a union employee, won’t exactly tell the story the way Kajima International, the owner of the New Otani, would want it told.

It was the 1970s, and Little Tokyo was ripe for redevelopment and controversy. Japanese investors were looking to Los Angeles, and Kajima secured the rights to build the New Otani and its adjoining mall, Weller Court. Arguments raged over topics ranging from alleged favoritism to the impact on low-cost housing. Kajima made promises but didn’t deliver, Koff said. “There is a history about Kajima that is very well known in Little Tokyo,” the union man asserted darkly.

The union tried to organize the New Otani in the early ‘80s, but was rebuffed in a vote of the workers. Four years ago, the union movement was revived.

Three housekeepers were fired, each of whom was active in the organizing efforts. New Otani management said it was just cause, but the National Labor Relations Board has since ruled that the terminations were illegal. The hotel operator--East-West Development Corp., in which Kajima holds a controlling 48% interest--is appealing.

With America’s labor movement in decline, the plight of the three New Otani housekeepers has become a rallying point for unionists across the country and beyond. Both the AFL-CIO and the Japanese Trade Union Federation have endorsed a boycott of New Otani hotels. The International Federation of Free Trade Unions, representing more than 10 million workers worldwide, also has endorsed the boycott.

When AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney announced in February that he would personally lobby Kajima in Tokyo, New Otani management released a statement calling Sweeney’s bid “just another series of stunts aimed at . . . confusing the public, with distorted or outright untruthful information.” Sweeney went to Japan but never got his audience.

The union’s tactics reflect the realization that boycotts and pickets only get you so far these days. Local 11 of the hotel workers union has fought back at Kajima in other ways, dogging the far-flung company on issues far removed from the rooms of the New Otani.

Labor had a big fat target in the Belmont Learning Center, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s once-grandiose project that, as originally envisioned, would have incorporated a high school, housing and a retail project. Kajima remains the developer of a scaled-down version, despite persistent questions that the district did not fulfill competitive bidding requirements.

In the Belmont battle, the hotel workers found natural allies in other unions, as well as taxpayer groups and other critics of the school system. In the Big Tujunga Wash controversy, Local 11 formed a coalition with environmentalists. Scores of union members attended Tuesday’s meeting. One told the council that Kajima should be “treated as a pariah company in this city.”

Golf course advocates argued that it was unfair for the opponents to play the Kajima card. What does the Big Tujunga Wash have to do with the New Otani hotel? Land-use attorney Mark Armbruster, a lobbyist for the golf project, told the City Council two weeks ago that Kajima was no longer part of the project, save as a lienholder on property owned by Cosmo World. Kajima had once been the developer but had bowed out in favor of Foothill Golf Development Group.

Ah, but if Kajima really is out of the deal, why did a Kajima executive bother to attend a July 15 meeting of state wildlife officials to discuss stream-bed issues on the Big Tujunga site? And why does the executive’s name appear on a letter permitting wildlife agency personnel to inspect the site?

Those are the questions raised by William Eick, a volunteer attorney for Small Wilderness Areas Preservation. David Koff did some of the sleuthing that led to those interesting queries. Koff’s title is “senior research analyst,” which apparently includes a bit of detective work.

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Armbruster estimated that half of the 10 votes were swayed by the union. Los Angeles may not be a union town, he observed, “but it’s a union council.”

Eick questioned Armbruster’s vote counting, but acknowledged that the battle would have been lost without the union. Doubts regarding Kajima’s role, he said, left council members wondering about the credibility of the indemnities and other promises made by Foothill Golf.

Councilwoman Laura Chick said the developer’s credibility indeed became a concern for her. In committee, she had voted for the golf course, but reversed herself after the conservancy made its offer and unions played the Kajima card.

Chick said a visit to Big Tujunga also helped change her mind. It really is a rare, beautiful place, she said, and it ought to be preserved.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.