Strike
Talk in the Suites
LA Weekly - September 17, 2004
by Robert Greene
"I voted yes," Regent Beverly Wilshire bellman Carlos
Tejada said Monday after marking his ballot to authorize a strike.
"I think we are sending a message to the hotels, the corporations
like the Beverly Wilshire, the Hilton, the Sheraton. We are
willing to stand up for ourselves."
Tejada and more than 2,000 other members of Local 11 of the
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (Unite Here) filed
into a conference room at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels
in downtown Los Angeles to empower their union to call a strike
against nine L.A. hotels. The move followed a similar vote among
Washington, D.C., hotel workers and came just before employees
in San Francisco took the same action.
By coordinating their votes, the hotel workers in the three
key cities showed they already were a step ahead of their counterparts
in L.A.'s grocery unions. Southern California's seven United
Food and Commercial Workers locals had to fold their strike
earlier this year after their time-honored insistence on local
control weakened their efforts in the face of nationwide solidarity
among the big three grocery corporations.
Hotel unions' strategy to line up contracts in all major cities
began after New York hotels and workers reached a five-year
accord in 2001. Now Local 11 and the Unite Here locals in D.C.
and San Francisco have made it their top priority to win a brief
two-year contract so that instead of being left to bargain separately
again, their new contracts will come due in 2006 along with
those in cities up and down the East Coast, in Canada, through
the Midwest, and Hawaii.
Union leaders say such nationwide strength is needed to match
the global clout of major hotel chains. "It wasn't just
yesterday we started planning for this," Local 11 chief
Maria Elena Durazo said. "We need to be ready. We need
to be organized. We need to defend ourselves."
The vote does not by itself mean there will be a strike. Strategists
believe the move will give Local 11 negotiators more power at
the bargaining table, since representatives of the Hotel Employer's
Council will know that they are facing off against people who
have authority to call an immediate walkout.
Fred Muir, spokesman for the Hotel Employer's Council, said
he hoped there would be no strike and that there would be no
lockout without a labor action. He noted that six of the nine
hotels recently reached a quick five-year agreement with the
Service Employees International Union that included raises and
free health care for gardeners, reception workers and other
hotel employees. The only thing holding up the Unite Here contract,
he said, was the insistence on a two-year term.
The current contract expired in April but was extended into
June. The hotels then terminated the pact and for the first
time imposed health care copayments for employee family members.
Tejada, who commutes five hours a day to and from his home in
Chino, said he was prepared to strike for "decent wages"
and health benefits. He makes $7.05 an hour, plus tips - but
he said wealthy travelers aren't very good tippers. "They
are penny pinchers. So many rich people don't understand the
cost of living. They pay up to $5,000 a night to stay in the
hotel and in the end we get just a 'thank you.'"
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