Hotel Workers Seek Clout

As a labor contract covering workers at 17 Los Angeles-area hotels expired Thursday, the union representing them kicked off a campaign to build power at the bargaining table with the international chains that dominate the industry.

John Wilhelm, president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, or HERE, mapped out a long-range strategy that he said would make the union look, and act, more like a national organization. That is likely to make the talks with hotels in Los Angeles more contentious.

Wilhelm’s plan is to line up contracts in major cities across the country so that they all will expire in 2006. That would raise the prospect of a crippling national strike and give the union far more clout.

Currently, each union local makes deals separately with hotels in its area, an approach that Wilhelm said no longer made sense after waves of consolidation in the industry.

“We all work for national and in some cases international companies,” Wilhelm said. “We think it’s sensible to have a national conversation about issues. I don’t think it’s possible, for instance, to deal with healthcare costs without a national conversation.”

The Southern California supermarket strike, which ended earlier this year with major union concessions on wages and healthcare benefits, illustrated the pitfalls for unions of dealing locally with national employers that can absorb the losses of a regional strike.

“We believe we’re stronger when [contracts] expire in the same year,” Wilhelm said, “and we think it makes more sense for the industry to approach it that way as well.”

As it is, HERE’s contracts with hotels in New York, Boston and Chicago all run out in 2006. But getting that expiration date on the next Los Angeles agreement, as well as on contracts due to end soon in San Francisco and Washington, is likely to be much tougher. Employers generally push for more than a two-year contract to ensure stability. And now that the HERE strategy is public, they are even more likely to resist.

“Our sense around the hotel is that the last contract was for six years’ contract and the next one should be close to that,” said John Stoddard, general manager of the Wilshire Grand hotel and a member of the hotel negotiating team. “Our employees don’t understand why they should have such a short contract.... Why should they be impacted if there are issues in Chicago?”

Negotiations between the union and the 17 hotels, concentrated in downtown Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, began a month ago but haven’t touched on economic issues. Noting that the industry is still in a slump, Stoddard said managers couldn’t afford to be generous.

“The hotels are absolutely struggling,” he said. “We’ve got inflation, workers’ compensation, unemployment insurance, the price of gas, electricity -- everything is going up.

“Following 9/11, the hotels scaled back as far as they could go and keep their doors open.... We’re as lean as we can be.”

But Maria Elena Durazo, president of HERE Local 11 in Los Angeles, said the 4,000 members covered by the contract expected to win substantial raises and keep family health insurance, along with addressing workload levels that she said had become intolerable.

Asked whether the union would strike over any of those issues or on the target expiration date, Wilhelm said such speculation would be premature. “In the kind of circumstances we’re now in, the hotels and the union have an obligation to do anything possible to avoid a strike,” he said.

HERE recently announced plans to merge with the small but well-financed garment workers’ union, UNITE. That merger is expected to take effect in July and would add to HERE’s ability to run a national contract campaign in 2006.

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Union hotels

Some prominent Southern California hotels with workers represented by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union:

* Hotel Bel-Air

* Hyatt Regency, downtown Los Angeles

* Millennium Biltmore, downtown Los Angeles

* Renaissance Hollywood

* Four Points by Sheraton Santa Monica

* Sheraton Universal, Universal City

* Westin Bonaventure, downtown Los Angeles

* Westin Century Plaza, Century City

* Hotel Del Coronado, San Diego

* W Hotel, Westwood

Source: HERE