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# Labor board rejects hotel workers’ petition
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/labor-board-rejects-hotel-workers-petition/
- Published: 2004-06-11T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T04:31:48.000Z
- Author: John Wood
- Tags: Government & Politics, Pico, #archive-import

*Workers don’t want to pay union dues*

A petition filed by a group of Santa Monica hotel workers who claim they were coerced into unionizing has been denied, labor authorities announced Thursday.

Workers at the Four Points Sheraton had asked for a secret election to determine if a majority of employees wanted union representation. Their petition was dismissed because it didn’t include workers at a nearby hotel who are part of the same union.

Both the Four Points on Pico Boulevard and the Viceroy on Ocean Avenue are owned by the Kor Realty Group. Workers at the two hotels are considered one “bargaining unit,” and therefore the Viceroy had to be named for the petition to move forward, according to the National Labor Relations Board ruling.

It’s unusual for workers to petition against their union. Since the NRLB was formed in 1965 to police labor law, employees have filed only 1,504 petitions to have a union decertified, said Tony Bisceglia, an NLRB spokesman. Organizers, on the other hand, have filed 8,400 petitions for a union election. The Four Points petition was different because it sought a secret election to gauge union support. There have been just 284 secret election petitions since 1965.

“We want official votes. We don’t want to cheat anyone. If (workers) want the union here, we will respect that,” hotel worker Raul Morales said last year. Morales, a bell captain at Four Points for nearly a decade, is the worker who formally filed the petition — but he wasn’t alone.

More than 30 percent of Four Points workers signed onto the petition against the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 11, which hopes to unionize all Santa Monica hotels.

Workers claimed labor leaders waged a harassment campaign to force them into the union. They filed formal charges with the labor board in December of last year, but the charges were dropped in February after investigators couldn’t substantiate the claims, Bisceglia said.

Union representatives denied any wrongdoing and said workers now enjoy far superior benefits. The labor agreement calls for average wage increases of 20 percent, free health benefits for full-and part-time employees, a pension plan, reduced workloads and paid lunch breaks, among other benefits and protections for Four Points workers, labor organizers have said.

More than half of the upper-end hotel rooms in Santa Monica are in unionized hotels, including those at the Four Points, Viceroy and the Fairmont Miramar Hotel. HERE organizing director Kurt Petersen has said the group is currently campaigning at the Doubletree Guest Suites on Fourth Street. Those still without any union presence are the Doubletree, the Radisson Huntley Hotel, Shutters on the Beach, Le Merigot Beach Hotel, the Holiday Inn Santa Monica Pier and Casa Del Mar.

Four Points workers have said they were turned off by aggressive organizing tactics, adding the promises of better wages and reduced workloads don’t hold. Plus, they said they didn’t want to pay the $37 monthly dues. Some told stories of relatives who had bad experiences with unions.

The workers are being represented by the National Right to Work Foundation, a non-profit organization that fights unions across the country. At issue in the dispute is an organizing method called a card-check process, when managers agree to let the union in and give them an extended period of time to gather signatures from the majority of employees. Opponents say the process lends itself to abuse by overzealous organizers. Proponents maintain it’s democratic.

Workers plan to appeal the recent NLRB ruling on the grounds that workers at the two hotels should fall into different bargaining units because they aren’t employed at both properties. If that theory doesn’t hold, the workers can still have their petition heard — if they can get signatures from 30 percent of the total number of workers at both hotels. That criteria is based solely on quantity, not location.

“If all those signatures come from one hotel or the other, that doesn’t make a difference to us,” Bisceglia said.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 11, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/061104.pdf?ref=smdp.com)