Rally demonstrated by anti-union hotel workers
Living wage and union supporters on Thursday rallied for more affordable health care for hotel workers.
A group of about 50 gathered in front of the Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel, which is behind the Civic Center on Fourth Street, to ask the hotel’s management to allow workers to vote on unionization and better health insurance.
Union organizers say 60 percent of the Doubletree’s workers have health insurance but on average they pay $1,300 a year for their coverage. They also say one out of every three children of Doubletree workers is on some form of public assistance.
Many workers sympathetic to the union said when their health insurance premiums were raised almost 100 percent at the beginning of the year, they could no longer afford insurance.
For Flora Andrade, a Doubletree maid, being without health insurance has been particularly devastating because one of her three sons has been diagnosed with a heart condition that requires regular doctor visits.
“I don’t want to live off the government and I have never asked the government for anything,” said Andrade through an interpreter while tears streamed down her cheeks. “So I must continue this fight for my children.”
Francious Khoury, the Doubletree general manager, said the hotel has no control over the escalating cost of health care or insurance.
“It’s a national phenomenon and it’s terrible,” Khoury said. “But it’s not something that’s confined to just our workers.”
Union organizers said workers at Santa Monica’s two unionized hotels, the Fairmont Mirarmar and the Viceroy, are provided free health insurance. Monthly union dues for workers at the hotels average $35, they said.
The rally was organized by clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, or CLUE, but there were just as many Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union organizers and living wage activists.
Three hotel workers who were scheduled to speak to the crowd almost did not make it to the rally because they said hotel managers detained them by giving them extra rooms to clean before they could take their noon lunch break — the time during which the rally was scheduled.
However, a half dozen hotel workers were allowed to gather across the street from union sympathizers to wave antiunion posters and chant in English and Spanish for the union to disappear. They were supervised by one of the hotel’s security guards.
Union supporters and living wage activists seemed unfazed at their rally being protested by the very workers they are trying to organize.
“Almost in every labor battle, workers are manipulated by hotel management to do what’s not in their best interest,” said Danny Feingold, a CLUE spokesman.
In his closing prayer at the rally, Ft. Michael Gutierrez prayed for the protesters of CLUE’s demonstration.
“Lord, we pray to the management of this hotel who use good people to say bad things,” he said. “The management uses these good people to spread their sins.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 12, 2002. Read the original PDF.