Unite Here to begin ratification votes with 34 Southland hotels

After nearly nine months of walkouts, protests and picket lines, union workers at 34 Southern California hotels will begin voting Thursday, March 21 to ratify tentative labor agreements with the hotels.

Ratification results and terms of the labor contracts should be announced Monday, March 25 by Unite Here Local 11.

The workers are among some 15,000 striking cooks, housekeepers, dishwashers and others at more than 60 Southland hotels who have staged protests over low wages and inhumane workloads.

Coordinated Bargaining Group, which represents the hotels, said the union’s delay in ratifications has cost workers pay hikes many could have seen months ago.

CGB also notes that hotel walkouts, which began July 1, 2023, have longer than the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes combined.

Like myriad other Southern California labor protests, Unite Here has been calling for substantial raises, specifically an immediate $5 pay hike for all employees, in addition to affordable health insurance, a better pension plan and “humane workloads.”

Epicenter of labor protests

The region has emerged as ground zero for labor activity, with employees in fast food, healthcare, retail, shipping and the airline industry flexing their muscles through strikes, picket lines and protests over wages, staffing and workplace conditions.

In February, Starbucks baristas in Seal Beach filed for a union election, which is still pending.

Flight attendants picketed Los Angeles International Airport and John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana for higher wages and better working conditions, and hundreds of fast-food workers rallied in Los Angeles to recruit employees into the newly created California Fast Food Workers Union, which is aimed at ensuring adequate wages, increasing work hours and boosting workplace protections.

The minimum wage for businesses with 26 or more workers in unincorporated LA County is rising to $17.28 an hour on July 1. Orange County’s wage floor is $16, the same as the state’s.

Depending on job and tenure, some hotel workers earn more. But they say pay increases are desperately needed to keep pace with Southern California’s surging housing costs, and others complain of being overworked.

“I’m overburdened,” said Patricia Martinez, who has been a housekeeper at the Doubletree Los Angeles hotel for 30 years. She says she cleans 15 rooms a day — a burden that is magnified if there’s a big group in one room.

The hotel walkouts have been punctuated by protests, unfair labor practice charges leveled at both sides and violence on the picket lines. But no ratifications.

Contract offers ignored

CBG noted five bargaining sessions in 2023 in which contract offers were made by various hotels were ignored or rejected by Unite Here.

“Unite Here Local 11’s failure to negotiate with hotels in a good faith timely and true manner has delayed ratifying any contracts for employees for more than twice as long as other labor negotiations,” the organization said.

Pete Hillan, speaking on behalf of the hotels through the California Lodging & Hotel Association, said Local 11’s strategy has hurt workers.

“We’re puzzled as to why Unite Here’s leadership hasn’t begun the ratification process so our employees — some of whom have been waiting nearly eight months — can have their pay increases now,” Hillan said recently. “They deserve to get those benefits immediately.”

Kurt Petersen, Local 11’s co-president, recently said the union was looking to ratify new contracts for all the more than 60 hotels at the same time. But that goal has shifted.

“We have won an unprecedented agreement in every way, from wages, pension, and healthcare to job security, to fair staffing guarantees,” Petersen said, referring to the 34 hotels. “This dogged determination should signal to the rest that we will not stop until every worker has won the same magnificent contract.”

For many, that can’t come soon enough.

Ana Pineda, who has been as a housekeeper at the LA Grand for 19 years, said staffing is inadequate. That situation has been compounded by LA’s Inside Safe program, which provides vacant hotel rooms to homeless people.

“It’s been difficult for us to work with people who have lived on the street,” the 59-year-old East LA resident said. “Most guests are here one or two days. But with the homeless, we’re dealing with people who are here seven days a week. It creates more work.”

In December, Los Angeles City Council approved a request to withdraw a Local 11 initiative from the March 2024 ballot that would have required all hotels in the city to house homeless people next to paying guests.

A compromise ordinance, known as the Responsible Hotel Ordinance, was instead approved, creating a voluntary registry in which participating hotels can notify the city of vacant rooms that can be made available for interim housing.

As workers at 34 hotels hold ratification votes, dozens of hotels remain unsettled, including the Hotel Figueroa, Hotel Maya, Doubletree Downtown Los Angeles, and the LA Grand.

‘Like a business monopoly’

Michael Saltsman, executive director of the Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit Center for Union Facts, said Local 11’s leaders appear to be dragging out the strike for their own self interests.

“They’re like a business monopoly,” he said. “There are no public officials who have held them accountable for this. They are not under the same kind of pressures other unions like the UAW might feel. The only person who has stood up to them is Taylor Swift.”

Local 11 last August urged the pop star to postpone her six-night run at SoFi Stadium to stand in “solidarity” with the striking hotel workers. Swift declined to cancel her performances. She made headlines instead when she gave her road crew up to $100,000 each as a personal thank you for their hard work during the tour.

“It’s hard to imagine a more pro-worker perspective, and seemingly one that Los Angeles would welcome to town,” Saltsman said.

Unite Here has also called for conventions to steer clear of LA until the hotel industry pays a “living wage” and puts an end to violence against striking members on the picket lines.

Some organizations, including the Democratic Governors Association, Japanese American Citizens League, W.K Kellogg Foundation and “Vanderpump Rules,” opted to cancel or move their conventions elsewhere last year as a result.

But others, including the LA Auto Show and Anime Expo 2023, moved ahead, drawing large crowds.

Violence on the picket lines

Union officials have long alleged violence on the picket lines. On Jan. 21 and 22, union members said they were injured while “repeatedly fired upon, apparently with an air rifle,” while picketing at the Hotel Figueroa in downtown LA, according to a letter sent to the Los Angeles Police Department.

In a news release issued Jan. 27, LAPD detectives asked for the public’s help in identifying the suspect/suspects involved in the attack.

Local 11 also filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in August, claiming CBG and officials with the Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows in Santa Monica, Hotel Maya in Long Beach and Marriott Laguna Cliffs Resort and Spa in Dana Point “condoned violence” against hotel workers in response to their union activities.

In one incident, a striking worker was allegedly tackled to the ground by hotel security at the Fairmont Miramar, the union said, and additional claims allege workers were “assaulted, threatened and had property destroyed” while picketing at other hotels.

Petersen is no stranger to organized labor. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame in 1987 and receiving his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1992, he joined the United Farm Workers of Washington State in Sunnyside, Wash. as an organizer.

He has been associated with Unite Here since 1995 and currently serves as Local 11’s co-president.

These labor actions are not unique to Southern California.

More than 16.2 million U.S. workers were represented by unions in 2023, an increase of 191,000 from 2022, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute. And the number of unionized employees involved in major work stoppages increased by 280% last year, the institute said, marking a return to levels last seen before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Source: Orange County Register