Hotel workers and labor activists rallied outside the Wilshire Grand Hotel Thursday to protest the lockout of nine laundry workers and to enforce a boycott in hopes of motivating hotel executives to negotiate a new, fairer contract.

Several student groups said USC had a unique role in the situation because one of the school's board of trustee members, Yang Ho Cho, is also chairman and CEO of Korean Air, which owns the Wilshire Grand located downtown.

"(Students) should put pressure on the administration by saying we don't want to show support for this through the tuition we pay," said Amanda Levin, vice president of USC College Democrats. "The ultimate goal would be to have USC completely boycott the offending hotels."

Labor groups including the AFL-CIO, The Los Angeles Coalition to Support Hotel Workers and the Los Angeles hotel worker's union UNITE HERE Local 11 are boycotting nine luxury hotels located throughout the city.

The Coalition said 3,000 hotel workers have been without a contract since it expired in March. Workers are demanding increased wages, health care benefits, a contract through 2006 and a national voice to ensure a fair contract.

"They don't respect us," said Donald Wilson, banquet chef at the Century Plaza Hotel, one of the other hotels being boycotted. "They say they treat us like family, but when it comes to contract time they treat us like stepchildren."

Wilson said he had worked at the Century for 26 years, and until their contract ran out this year employees always had free health care.

A $40 monthly co-payment is now required, an amount many employees with families cannot afford.

Levin said 80 percent of workers previously covered by the health plan cannot afford the new fee.

But a spokesman for the Los Angeles Hotel Employer Council said a contract currently being offered by the hotels offers free health care along with a 20 percent wage increase over a five-year contract period.

"We've had a contract on the table since June, but (workers) don't want to accept it because it is a five-year contract," said Employer Council spokesman Fred Muir. "They want a two-year plan so they can join up with other cities for a 2006 national labor action."

The national labor action would link hotel workers in 10 major cities across the United States in an effort to present a united front when contract negotiations are planned in 2006, Muir said.

"We think a five-year contract is feasible, and the offer on the table is good," Muir said. "The majority of Americans aren't offered free health care."

Of the hundreds of hotels in Los Angeles, only 17 currently have contracts with the hotel workers' union, Muir said.

"They're trying to demonize these hotels, when we're the only ones who have contracts to begin with," he said.

UNITE, formerly the Union of Needletrades, Textiles and Industrial Employees joined with HERE, formerly Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, to form UNITE HERE in July of this year to better organize workers during contract agreements.

UNITE HERE Local 11 represents the workers currently struggling with the nine hotels.

The consolidation of hotels under two national chains - Hyatt and Starwood - has forced workers to present a united national voice in order to achieve fair contracts, according to the UNITE HERE Web site.

The goal of the Employers Council to issue a five-year contract, they said, is to keep L.A. hotel workers separate from their co-workers across the nation at the same hotel brands who will be negotiating as a group in 2006.

A comparison by the union of room attendant wages in major cities across the United States shows the current discrepancy that has Los Angeles workers at the bottom. An attendant working in Washington D.C. earns $13 an hour, in San Francisco wages are $15.09 an hour, and in New York it's $18.88 an hour.

A room attendant in Los Angeles receives $11.02 an hour for the same work.

"The workers are overextended," Levine said. "There are statistics that say the average hotel maid is more likely to be injured at work than a coal miner because of the heavy lifting and other job responsibilities they're required to do," she said.

The Los Angeles City Council issued a resolution in August in support of the hotel workers, citing lower worker payments in Los Angeles and the consolidation of hotels across the country as reasons for the need of a national voice.

More News About the Los Angeles Hotel Workers' Struggle for a Fair Contract >>