After a three-month delay, city hotel owners are set today to issue a counterproposal in the yearlong contract standoff with more than 4,300 union workers at 14 downtown hotels.

While the proposal kicks off the first round of bargaining in the labor dispute since Feb. 14, players on both sides point to recent developments in Los Angeles as a possible example of how the situation could unfold here.

The union, Unite Here Local 2, and owners, the 14-hotel San Francisco Multi-Employer Group, have been deadlocked for nearly a year over health care coverage, wages, pensions and the length of a new contract. Local 2's contract expired last August.

After a two-week strike in October, followed by a six-week lockout, the two-sides have been engaged in a tense "cooling-off period" which has included a union boycott of the hotels involved.

If L.A. is any indication, city hotel workers can expect a contact offer today rich in economic incentives but lacking the 2006 expiration date union officials in both cities have sought.

On May 15, the eight-hotel Los Angeles Hotel Owners Council issued an offer to Local 11 - also an affiliate of Unite Here - that was more generous than anything they had put on the table previously, according to hotel council spokesman Fred Muir. It proposed 22 percent wage increases over four years, totally free health benefits, and a signing bonus of $1,000 for nontipped workers and $500 for employees earning tips.

Muir said the offer was intended to provoke a quick deal.

"This was an exceptional, one-time offer that will not be repeated," he told The Examiner. "We think it's generous enough that we should be able to get a deal done. We want to finish this thing now."

David Koff, a spokesman for Local 11, said the offer "proved that the hotels have more financial resources than they previously admitted," but it lacked a 2006 expiration date, which Local 2 and Local 11 have insisted on from the beginning. Los Angeles negotiations resume on June 3.

The locals have made the 2006 expiration a priority because it would synchronize their contract with hotel unions in Boston, New York and Chicago. With a handful of multinational chains owning the majority of the big hotels, union leaders believe the once isolated locals need to coordinate efforts on a national level.

But SFMEG spokesman Steve Trent suggested Friday that hotel owners are still committed to a multiyear contract.

In a statement he said today's offer would include "affordable and comprehensive health care, improved pension benefits and long-term security."

"We believe the contract stalemate has gone on long enough," said Trent, the managing partner of the Grant Hyatt Hotel.