Bellmen, desk workers and other employees at one of seven hotels involved in a 14-month labor contract dispute went on strike early Thursday, triggering a vote by the hotel operators to lock out employees at all their hotels.

Some 120 workers at the Hyatt hotel on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, known as the "Rock and Roll Hotel" for its high-profile music bookings and glitzy location, walked out hours before a new contract offer from the hotel operators was set to expire.

Fred Muir, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Hotel Employee Council, which represents the LA-area hotels, said management at the Hyatt invoked a provision in a mutual-aid pact between the hotels asking the other operators to lock out their employees.

The Hyatt's request was honored, but no timetable was given as to when the other hotel employees would be locked out, Muir said.

Muir said once the lockout begins it would last two weeks, the same length the of time union officials said the Hyatt workers would remain on strike.

"(The union) knew full well that this could be a consequence of their actions," Muir said. "And yet they chose to take this path. We think it's unfortunate that they did, but we really had no choice."

The hotel operators also extended the deadline of their latest contract offer to midnight Saturday. The contract had been set to expire at 5 p.m. Thursday.

Officials with Unite Here Local 11, the union that represents 2,500 employees of the seven hotels, said the general lockout went too far.

"It's a very irresponsible response to what we thought was a measured action," said Amanda Cooper, a union spokeswoman.

The union and the hotels have been trying to negotiate terms of a new labor contract on and off since June 2004, when the employees' last contract expired.

But both sides remain deadlocked on one key issue - the length of a new contract. The union is seeking a deal that would align its next contract's expiration with the 2006 expiration of contracts for employees of several other regional hotels. Doing so would allow hotel workers to leverage their numbers against hotel operators in future contract negotiations, the union contends.

The hotels have sought a longer term deal.

Thursday's Hyatt employee strike was devised as a protest to get the hotels to refund some $650,000 in health insurance co-pays they charged workers between July and February, and $1.5 million the union says the hotel operators failed to pay into the employees' health and welfare fund, Cooper said.

The hotels began charging the workers $10 a week after declaring an impasse in contract talks. The National Labor Relations Board is investigating whether the move was legal.

A majority of the Southern California hotel employees voted last September to strike, but did not set a date for a walkout. Their counterparts in San Francisco, where 85 percent of hotels are unionized, went on strike last October and were subsequently locked out by 14 of the city's most popular hotels.

Workers in Los Angeles, where some 45 percent of hotels are unionized, were more reluctant to strike.

Muir said the Hyatt remained open as workers from other council hotels were expected to fill in for striking employees.

The latest contract proposal by the hotels was presented to the union on May 16 and offers a 22 percent pay increase over four years, free health care for workers and their families, plus $1,000 signing bonuses for "non-tip" employees such as housekeepers and $500 bonuses for tip employees such as bartenders, Muir said.

"This is the best contract offer that any Unite Here Local has achieved anywhere in the country in the past year," Muir said. "We don't know what else we can offer them."

Cooper said hotel workers had "issues" with the contract offer.

"Our members still want and need a fair contract that expires in 2006," she said.

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