HERE must convince court it legally unionized Four Points Sheraton
PICO BLVD. — A federal labor judge will decide early next year whether the Four Points Sheraton Hotel in Santa Monica was illegally unionized.
The National Labor Relations Board issued a formal complaint last week, alleging the union took power in December of 2003 without the necessary majority backing from workers. Union officials will fight those claims in a Jan. 3 hearing.
At issue in the dispute is the way labor organizers build consensus among workers. At Four Points, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 11 used what’s called a card-check process, where they had an extended time period to gather support from a majority of workers.
Opponents of the card-check process say it’s unfair to workers, who can be approached by organizers and lobbied individually.
“We believe that it’s important that workers choose their own representation and that must be free of coercion,” said Justin Hakes, an attorney for the conservative National Right to Work Foundation, a nonprofit group. “We don’t think that employers and union officials should be getting together and cutting backroom deals to force unionization on workers that may not necessarily want it. We believe the employees themselves should be free to decide.”
Hakes represents seven workers from Four Points who filed a complaint last December, alleging hotel employees were coerced into unionizing and that a majority actually didn’t want to be organized. The charges were dismissed by the regional office of the labor board in February, but later appealed, and in September, the Washington, D.C. office of the NLRB agreed that a majority hadn’t backed unionization. The NLRB issued a formal complaint last week stating HERE “has been restraining and coercing employees” by representing them for the last 15-plus months without consent from the majority.
Kurt Petersen, the union’s organizing director, said the complaint reflected a political change in the board’s makeup and maintained that a majority of Four Points workers do want to be organized.
“There’s no question we had a majority,” he said. “Recently, the National Labor Relations Board, under the direction of George Bush, they changed the rule... Those workers have gotten caught in this anti-worker shift... It’s totally political.
“It’s a change in the law midstream. Workers will suffer for it.”
NLRB officials said they couldn’t comment on the evidence in the case. According to Petersen, the NLRB is claiming the union didn’t have majority support because there was a petition signed by many Four Points workers stating they didn’t want union representation.
Under the old law, Petersen said the workers would have had to submit the petition to have it count against unionization. Under the new law, Petersen said the petition’s existence precluded the union’s authority to declare a victory in the card-check process.
Under the union contract, workers pay $37 a month and benefit from, among other things, paid lunch hours, increased salaries and reduced workloads, Petersen said. Still, some of the employees have said they prefer to work outside of the union because they don’t trust union organizers, and fear their benefits will be reduced and premiums raised. Some workers pointed to negative experiences relatives have had working in other unionized hotels.
While HERE prepares to fight the charges at the Jan. 3 trial, Four Points management already has agreed in a settlement with the NLRB to nullify the union contract. That settlement is on hold pending the outcome of the January trial, according to Tony Bisceglia, an NLRB spokesman.
Average NLRB trials last for several days, and the labor judges often take several weeks before issuing a decision, Bisceglia added.
HERE is no stranger to the card-check process. Union officials are using the same method to unionize workers at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, where they have been gathering signatures under a card-check process for more than two years. Petersen said a small but vocal faction of anti-union workers have prevented organizers from declaring victory there.
Four Points last year became Santa Monica’s third large hotel to be unionized, following the Viceroy and Fairmont Miramar. Organizers have pledged to unionize all of Santa Monica’s major luxury hotels, including Loews, the Doubletree Guest Suites, Le Merigot, Casa Del Mar, Shutters on the Beach, the Radisson Huntley Hotel and the Holiday Inn Santa Monica Pier.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 8, 2004. Read the original PDF.