The hotel workers union staged a rowdy all-day protest Thursday outside the Wilshire Grand in downtown Los Angeles, injecting some drama into a long-running dispute with nine luxury hotels and prompting clusters of conference guests to walk out in support.

Conner Everts, executive director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance, lost a few panelists and scores of attendees at his long-planned conference on water policies.

"This is very hard for me," said Everts, the son of a union longshoreman, who considered canceling the conference but would have lost $40,000. He noted that he chose the Wilshire Grand because it was a union hotel. "We are very sympathetic to the workers outside," he said.

Hotel manager John Stoddard said the effect on operations was minimal and the demonstration would not provoke a lockout. The nine hotels had once threatened to lock out all workers in the Unite Here union if they picketed hotels. Stoddard said that wasn't necessary now because "there isn't a lot of support for their initiative."

The protest - the first planned picketing of a hotel in the dispute by Unite Here members - started at 8 a.m., when about 60 union members picked up signs and chanted over bullhorns, trying to dissuade guests from entering. Inside the plush lobby, however, the noise was muffled and seemed to draw little attention.

Union leaders said there would be more "sieges" in coming weeks at area hotels, adding that their recently announced boycott was having an effect. Union researchers said at least 40 groups had canceled banquets, conferences and small conventions since the dispute began last spring.

Unite Here is also battling hotels in Washington and San Francisco. Managers at 14 luxury properties in the Bay Area city locked out their 4,000 union workers in mid-October.

The central issue in all three cities is the contract expiration date. The union wants the deals to expire in 2006, which would line them up with union contracts in other major U.S. cities and open the possibility of a broad national strike. Hotel negotiators have said they will never agree to that.

Talks are likely to resume in early December, according to sources on both sides. They have not met since mid-September.

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