Revamped Union Launches Hotel Organizing Drive
Five years after national labor leaders seized control of a foundering Westside hotel workers union, the revamped local has announced an ambitious, well-financed campaign to organize luxury beachfront resorts, starting with the prominent Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel.
Thursday’s public debut of the campaign, in the works for more than a year, is a milestone for the once-moribund Local 814 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union, which was placed into trusteeship by national HERE President John Wilhelm in 1995.
At the time, the local was about to lose the Miramar, the only major unionized hotel in Santa Monica. After an internal shake-up, HERE regained the confidence of workers, who last month overwhelmingly voted against decertification.
Now the local, in partnership with HERE Local 11 in Los Angeles, has big plans to make Los Angeles a union-hotel town, in part by building alliances with local government leaders, community groups and even business owners. The kickoff rally in Santa Monica, for example, featured religious and community leaders as well as workers at the 350-room hotel.
The union’s strategy is to avoid drawn-out federal elections and instead persuade employers to recognize the union if a simple majority of employees sign pledge cards. That strategy worked 10 years ago in Las Vegas, where Wilhelm turned around a faltering union local and forged partnerships with big casino hotels, most of which are now union. High wages and benefits, as well as employer-sponsored job training and language programs, are now standard at Las Vegas hotels.
During a recent visit to Los Angeles, Wilhelm said that with the thriving Southland economy there’s no reason the same thing can’t happen here. He and local union leaders have promised a high-profile campaign that could spill over to the Democratic National Convention in mid-August if hotels don’t cooperate. “It has to be a two-part message,” he said. “Work with us, or there’s a price to pay.”
That could prove particularly awkward for Vice President Al Gore, because Loews President and CEO Jonathan Tisch is a major fund-raiser for the presumed Democratic nominee.
In a brief statement sent from the company’s New York headquarters, spokeswoman Debra Kelman said, “Loews Hotels has always, and will continue, to fully support whatever decision the employees themselves make.” That decision, however, would have to be made in a federally supervised election, she said. Five of the company’s 15 hotels are union--two in Canada, two in New York and one in Washington, D.C.
Unions say they are far less successful in National Labor Relations Board elections because they give employers more time to influence or intimidate workers.
In the past month, Loews has offered housekeepers two significant raises, bringing wages up to $9.50 per hour from less than $7. Union activists said the raises were an attempt to short-circuit the campaign, but they said support remained strong.
“We’re very positive,” said Mayra Alfaro, a three-year employee who cleans 15 rooms a day. Her name and photo were featured, along with 29 others, in a pro-union flier distributed Thursday. “We think we have the support of 80% to 90% of the workers,” she said.
The Miramar, bought by Fairmont Hotels last year, is still the only one of six major beach resorts in Santa Monica with a union. More than half the Class A hotel rooms in downtown Los Angeles are union. Downtown hotels that are nonunion, including the New Otani, Marriott, and Omni, will also be targeted in the campaign, union officials said.
