Unite Here Union

The room-service waiter's eyes watered as he gave his union the authority Monday to strike against nine Los Angeles County hotels. But Miguel Vasquez Jr. said it was more from fatigue than emotion. There was never a question of how he would vote, he said, just a question of when. He had to squeeze it in during a 45-minute break between one eight-hour shift at the Hyatt Regency in downtown L.A. and another eight-hour shift at the nearby Wilshire Grand.

Hundreds of hotel workers rallied along the Sunset Strip on Friday, warning Los Angeles-area employers that they would not accept pay cuts, reduced benefits or other givebacks. "We should be earning more, not less," said Morena Hernandez, a maid at the Andaz, the upscale hostelry that was targeted in Friday's protest. "We can't afford a cut in benefits." The noisy but peaceful protest organized by Local 11 of Unite Here took place on the narrow sidewalk in front of the Andaz, formerly the West Hollywood Hyatt, which reopened in January after Hyatt refurbished the property.

Hilton Hotels Corp. said it had reached a tentative agreement with the Unite Here union on a new contract covering 1,550 employees at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa. The vote by union members at the resort, the biggest in Hawaii, is expected this week. Shares of Beverly Hills-based Hilton rose 20 cents to $28.92.

Carmen Padron, a commercial laundry worker in Pomona, said a rival union tried to persuade her to abandon her longtime local. "They should be organizing workers who don't have a union, not harassing us," Padron said. George Ibarra, a hotel worker in Texas, said an organizing drive in San Antonio collapsed when a competing union swooped in and made a deal with management. "That was completely underhanded," Ibarra said. The two incidents are among numerous episodes in a vicious civil war that is roiling the U.S. labor movement and diverting attention from its core goals -- better contracts for workers, new organizing drives and a far-reaching political agenda in Washington.

Talks resumed Friday between 14 San Francisco hotels and the Unite Here union, although no progress toward a new contract was reported by late afternoon. The bargaining session, the first since Sept. 15, sought to resolve differences that led to a two-week strike at four of the hotels. That walkout is set to expire Wednesday. In retaliation, the 10 other hotels locked out union employees and brought in replacement workers.

Eight prominent Los Angeles-area hotels Monday sweetened their labor contract offer, but a union official said workers would probably reject the deal because of its expiration date. The hotels said they offered a $2.50 hourly raise over four years and a $1,000 signing bonus to full-time workers who don't collect tips. That would apply mainly to housekeepers, the largest group in the union local.

The hotel workers union staged a rowdy all-day protest Thursday outside the Wilshire Grand in downtown Los Angeles, injecting some drama into a long-running dispute with nine luxury hotels and prompting clusters of conference guests to walk out in support. Conner Everts, executive director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance, lost a few panelists and scores of attendees at his long-planned conference on water policies.

Hotel groups in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, mired in protracted contract disputes with the hotel workers union, each filed complaints last week alleging that the union has not bargained in good faith. The complaints contend that the Unite Here union has not seriously considered the hotels' "fair, reasonable and equitable" contract offers. Instead, the complaints said, the union has insisted on two-year deals that would expire along with pacts in other U.S.

Unite Here, the hospitality industry's primary labor union, unveiled a new organization Wednesday that will warn meeting planners of potential contract disputes and help them find labor-friendly hotels. The program, called Informed Meetings Exchange, or Inmex, already has more than 100 subscribers representing about $200 million in annual hotel expenditures, union officials said. Members include the NAACP, Sierra Club and San Jose Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The Glendale Hilton has reached a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board over allegations that its managers threatened, interrogated and conducted surveillance of workers during a union organizing drive there last fall, hotel and union officials said Thursday.

The board of labor union Unite Here voted Friday to bolt from union federation Change to Win, which Unite Here helped found in 2005, and to rejoin the AFL-CIO. The Unite Here board accused the giant Service Employees International Union, another Change to Win member, of interfering in Unite Here's internal affairs. Representatives of laundry and garment workers who are members of Unite Here are seeking to separate from the rest of the union, which represents hospitality workers.

Representatives of laundry and garment workers said they would vote today on whether to withdraw from their union, Unite Here, with an eye toward establishing formal ties with the Service Employees International Union. But Unite Here's majority leadership said the union's constitution prohibits affiliates from deciding on their own to secede.

Contract negotiations are seldom easy, but this could be a new low. Talks between Disney and one of the resort's biggest unions are stalled for an unlikely reason: The parties have spent two months trying to agree on a meeting place. Union leaders believe that rancor over a dispute about housing for workers in the Anaheim Resort District has spilled into talks between Walt Disney Co. and employees at three Disney hotels.

In what may be the first action of its kind, California workplace safety regulators have charged that the duties performed by housekeepers at a hotel -- scrubbing, bed making, vacuuming -- violate the state's repetitive-motion rules. A citation issued late last month by the Division of Occupational Safety and Health identified eight infractions at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel.

On some days, Christine Hsu scarcely sees the city whose political and labor leadership her family has up in arms. Instead, she stays inside the Hilton Los Angeles Airport, the hotel her father bought, the hotel his company still owns, the hotel where she and her brother live for weeks at a time, 15 floors above Century Boulevard. The Hilton, with more than 1,200 rooms, is the second-largest hotel in Los Angeles County.

Amma, the renowned mystic known as the "hugging saint of India," arrived in Los Angeles over the weekend for five days of spiritual events, but the city's labor leaders are responding with the back of their hands. The problem is Amma's choice of venue for her events: the Hilton Los Angeles Airport hotel.

A coalition of prominent Los Angeles hotels has suffered a double blow in its yearlong power struggle with the hotel workers' union, as two of nine original members publicly broke ranks on the crucial issue of the contract expiration date. The Unite Here union is demanding that the contract end in 2006 as part of a campaign to line up expiration dates across the country. That could allow the union to call a national strike as it goes up against national chains, leaders said.

Managers at the Glendale Hilton threatened, interrogated and conducted surveillance of the hotel's workers during a union organizing drive there last fall, according to a complaint by the National Labor Relations Board. The complaint was issued last week by a regional office of the NLRB after a five-month investigation.

The Westin Los Angeles Airport hotel suspended 25 workers after they refused to remove buttons bearing the name of the union engaged in a bitter organizing campaign at the hotel, workers and union officials said. Hotel managers did not return a phone call seeking comment. The Westin and other nonunion hotels near LAX have been the targets of an organizing campaign by Unite Here, an international union representing hotel workers, for more than a year.

Hilton Hotels Corp. said it had reached a tentative agreement with the Unite Here union on a new contract covering 1,550 employees at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa. The vote by union members at the resort, the biggest in Hawaii, is expected this week. Shares of Beverly Hills-based Hilton rose 20 cents to $28.92.