Plan to Protect Workers Weighed

Long at odds with luxury beach hotels over pay to low-wage workers, the Santa Monica City Council will consider a plan tonight aimed at protecting employees who have supported union organizing from retaliatory layoffs during the current tourism slump.

The measure comes as Santa Monica hotels are firing hundreds of housekeepers, room service attendants, banquet servers and others, and reducing the hours of many more, in response to a drastic drop in demand since the mid-September terrorist attacks.

Mayor Michael Feinstein said he wants to ensure that those reductions are not retaliation against union activists. The council will vote on an ordinance giving workers protection if they can show they have been unfairly targeted.

Feinstein also will introduce a plan to force hotels and restaurants to hire back employees according to seniority when tourists return in enough numbers.

“We don’t want the situation of the Sept. 11 tragedies to be an opportunity for people to fire workers without cause,” he said.

Hotel managers said that the layoffs were based on seniority and that no particular workers were targeted. Officials of the Chamber of Commerce, at odds with council members over a living wage ordinance passed in June, were not available for comment Monday.

The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union contends that some key supporters had lost their jobs at nonunion hotels in the last few weeks. They feared those workers would not be rehired.

“We think some hotels are using this to get rid of lots of people, including union activists,” said Kurt Peterson of Local 814. “These folks have put many years in these hotels, and they deserve to have their jobs back [when the economy improves].”

A spokeswoman for Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, a nonunion business that has been the focus of union organizing for the last year, said she had not had time to review the council proposals and could not comment.

She confirmed that 50 employees were fired at the end of their shifts two weeks ago, with no notice. Several were hired back a week later, but with fewer hours and without the health benefits they had earlier.

All workers who were fired were referred to public assistance agencies and health clinics, said spokeswoman Sara Harper.

The proposal to rehire workers by seniority would parallel a standard union guarantee.

Peterson, who helped write the proposal, said it would be the first city ordinance in the nation to dictate how private business owners handle rehires after a downturn.