Hotel's owners dig in for labor fight

In Los Angeles, that pattern is recurring.

Throughout the fight, the Hsus have maintained a public silence. Through a lawyer and a public relations consultant, they declined to be interviewed or to answer written questions from The Times.

Family members did not respond to repeated phone messages left for them in Los Angeles and Taipei.

"They've never talked to the media, and they're not going to start now," said Harvey Englander, the consultant, who said he had never met the Hsus.

For most of the last year, hotel managers and spokesmen have issued statements accusing politicians and Unite Here organizers of lying about the hotel and demanding unionization without a vote of workers.

One statement said the union and city councilmen who support its efforts are "deliberately hurting our employees' way of life."

The owners of other airport hotels say they have had little contact with the Hsus, who prefer to communicate through their Hilton managers.

"We have tried to communicate with them, but we have not been able," said Michael Gallegos, chief executive of American Property Management Corp., which owns the Sheraton Four Points. Like the Hsus, he opposes unionization, but he has backed the living wage legislation that the Hsus fought.

Elia Roan, a Fortuna Enterprises partner whose family has been close to the Hsus for years, says they offer little information on the hotel, including during annual meetings in Los Angeles. Roan said she had not been made aware of the union organizing effort.

"My family is close," Roan said. "And their family situation is closer than mine."

The Hsus have been hurt by the criticism, particularly the suggestion that they are hostile to immigrant workers, said Paul Szeto, president of a Monterey Park-based Christian ministry the Hsus have supported.

"They are immigrants helping immigrants," Szeto said of the Hsus. "They really want to help the people, the staff. And they themselves live frugally. They save. They don't waste. It's a very Christian kind of living."

Long career

When Henry Hsu bought the Hilton in 1992 for $45 million, the purchase appeared to cap a long career for a renowned Taiwanese businessman, legislator, sportsman and philanthropist.

Born in China to parents who were doctors, Hsu had planned to be a doctor himself until his mother was killed in a hotel fire when he was 18, he said in an oral history project that was obtained and translated by The Times.