HERE not to stay: Union is bowing out
PICO BLVD. — A local union at the Sheraton Four Points Hotel has agreed to withdraw, after it was found to be illegally organized.
The National Labor Relations Board on March 31 filed a complaint against Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 11 (HERE) for coercing workers into unionization. The Sheraton was found to be unlawfully assisting and supporting the union, according to the complaint.
At issue was the way labor organizers built consensus among workers. At the Sheraton, HERE used what’s called a card-check process, where they had an extended time period to gather support from a majority of workers.
But seven workers from the Sheraton filed a complaint in December 2003, alleging hotel employees were coerced into unionizing and that a majority actually didn’t want to be organized. They had signed a petition stating they no longer wanted union representation. But, apparently, their votes counted toward unionizing anyway, resulting in a majority even though only a minority of employees agreed to a union, according to the NLRB.
However, the NLRB’s Los Angeles regional office in February of 2004 sided with HERE by ruling that the union had a majority and employees weren’t coerced. The ruling was later appealed by the National Right to Work Foundation, which represented the seven workers.
In September of 2004, the Washington, D.C. office of the NLRB agreed that a majority hadn’t backed unionization. The NLRB issued a formal complaint in December of 2004 stating HERE “has been restraining and coercing employees” by representing them for the last 18-plus months without consent from the majority.
“We basically got reversed,” said Anne Pomerantz, deputy regional attorney for the NLRB’s LA office. “The case came to us as an unlawful labor negotiations violation and it was found that the employer unlawfully recognized a minority union.”
Union officials were preparing to fight the charges at an April 4 trial, but the case was settled just days before it was scheduled to be heard.
“Despite HERE union officials’ claims of innocence, their decision to settle suggests that union officials recognize that they may not enjoy the support of a majority of workers,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation, a conservative nonprofit group that provides legal aid to workers and fights union abuses throughout the country.
Kurt Petersen, organizing director for HERE, said the union didn’t want to drag the workers through more years of bureaucracy and it does have a majority at the hotel.
“The motivation for settling was that we wanted to move forward,” he said.
Meanwhile, management at the Sheraton had already agreed in a settlement with the NLRB to nullify the union contract. The settlement was on hold pending the outcome of the April trial.
And while the hotel’s management views the ruling as a victory, so do union officials, who believe workers have better working conditions as a result of their efforts.
“We are not going away from the Four Points,” Petersen said. “The union is still at the Four Points because the workers are still there.”
Petersen claims that the union contract is in place at the Sheraton and workers now receive far better benefits including a half-hour paid lunch break, a $1.50 an hour wage increase, reduced workloads and family health care coverage for those who work more than 20 hours a week.
However, Pomerantz said under the settlement agreement, the contract is void. “(HERE) has agreed that the union will not be the collective bargaining unit for those employees and by (the settlement’s) terms, that contract can’t be good any-more,” she said.
Petersen said the NLRB’s ruling is political, spurred by big business interests who want to decimate unions throughout the country.
“The NLRB is an anti-worker organization and it’s only gotten worse under George Bush,” Petersen said, while acknowledging that the LA office of the NLRB sided with him. But the board’s political make-up in Washington D.C. is becoming more conservative and the National Right to Work Foundation is funded by right-wing organizations, he said.
“They want to keep people in poverty. They’re out to hurt workers... they don’t care about workers,” Petersen said. “They wanted to take away all of their benefits. That should tell you something about these people.”
Opponents of the card-check process say it’s unfair to workers, who can be approached by organizers and lobbied individually. They claim pacts are formed and often include unlawful prearrangements over employment terms and conditions, including health care, wages or union dues. “(The settlement) is a victory, but it’s a small victory,” said Justin Hakes, an attorney for the National Right to Work Foundation. “It’s a step in the right direction... we have dozens of these cases and there are thousands of employees suffering from these types of abuses.”
Some Sheraton employees have said they felt harassed into signing union authorization cards and they were turned off by aggressive organizing tactics, adding the promises of better wages and reduced workloads didn’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.
Many of the workers who agreed to unionize likely did so because of the benefits associated with it — like paid lunch hours, increased salaries and reduced workload. The labor agreement called 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 Sheraton workers, labor organizers have said.
The Sheraton would’ve become 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 April 13, 2005. Read the original PDF.