Santa Monica Hotel Workers Step Up Protests

Workers from Santa Monica’s luxury beach hotels bolstered their campaign of protests Wednesday against a hotel-led ballot measure that they say would strip the city’s power to boost their minimum pay to a living wage.

Scores of protesters carried noisemakers and signs and marched through Santa Monica chanting “We need a living wage, not a minimum wage!” They surprised shoppers at the farmers market and slowed morning traffic as they marched to the beachfront hotels.

They spent about an hour outside while hotel managers watched passively. Some protesters sat down for a while in the dining room at Shutters during lunch hour.

Police said there were no arrests and no damage caused by the protests.

In a push to unionize more than 300 workers at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union organized several days of marches and demonstrations through Santa Monica’s high-traffic downtown shopping district and in downtown Los Angeles.

Protesters said they wanted to publicize what they contend are “union-busting” tactics by hotel officials and the hotel’s living wage initiative proposed for the November ballot, which unions say would actually hurt many workers.

Meanwhile, hotel officials say that they already pay a living wage and that a city living wage law would unnecessarily imbalance the local economy.

This week’s protests are the latest in a yearlong battle between members of the Santa Monica City Council and local businesses over a proposed city ordinance that would require hotels to double wages paid to about 3,000 housekeepers, valet drivers, restaurant workers and security guards in the beachfront hotel district.

Under the city’s proposal, targeted workers would earn a minimum $10.69 an hour, instead of the average of $6.50 to $8 an hour they earn now.

In response, the hotels, backed by other local businesses, launched a ballot initiative to grant a living wage to about 200 government contract workers but strip the City Council of the authority to pass a living wage ordinance.

The hotel’s petitioners gathered 15,500 signatures in support of the hotel’s measure, nearly double the number needed for an initiative to qualify for the November ballot, Santa Monica City Clerk Maria Stewart said.

However, about 1,000 people later asked to rescind their signatures, Stewart said.

The City Council will vote to place the measure on the ballot next month after the signatures are verified, city officials said.

Loews spokesman Matt Lonner called the union protests “a smear campaign.”

“The fact is that employees at Loews earn more than the only union hotel in Santa Monica, the Fairmont Miramar,” Lonner said.

Meanwhile, the union said the hotel has prohibited employees from discussing the union at work and has hired consultants to interrogate them about their union support.

Two weeks ago, workers filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board citing 22 charges against the hotel, for allegedly intimidating and threatening pro-union workers.

“The hotel has union busters who are living at the hotel and holding mandatory meetings with employees maintaining a nonstop barrage of why the union is bad,” union spokesman Kurt Petersen said. “This is like a reign of terror inside the hotel.”

Loews houseman Luis Marquez, 42, spent his day off marching with protesters although the hotel recently increased his hourly wage from $7 to $9.50.

Marquez said the hotel is trying to persuade workers not to unionize by granting wage increases, he said. Generally, workers received about a 14 or 15 cent raise each year.

“Only when we started protesting did they give us these huge raises to confuse us,” he said. “But we need the union.”