Orange County’s hotels,already facing a tight labor market and increased competition,are likely to face another challenge in coming months: stepped up efforts by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union to organize more of OC’s hotel workers.
Union members from Local 681, which represents about 5,000 workers in OC and Long Beach, recently picketed the grand opening of Garden Grove’s 384-room Crowne Plaza Hotel, the largest hotel scheduled to open in California this year.
Union officials say there is more to come.
“Generally speaking, we’d like to unionize all the hotels in Orange County,” said Local 681 spokesman John Earl.
Earl echoed sentiments expressed to the Business Journal earlier this year by Linda Sanchez upon her election as head of the Orange County Central Labor Council. Linda Sanchez is the sister of Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Garden Grove.
When she took the helm of the Labor Council in March, Sanchez called the county’s past efforts at unionization “lackluster” and said she intended to run aggressive organizing drives and encourage more political activism by members.
With only a handful of OC’s Natural Target hotels unionized,including the Hilton Anaheim, West Coast Anaheim and the two existing Disney hotels,the sector is a natural target.
So far, however, the union appears to only be targeting hotels on the verge of opening their doors. Bob Olson, president of R.D. Olson Construction in Irvine, which has three hotels under construction that will open next year, said he has not heard from any union officials to date.
In Los Angeles, where most hotels already are unionized, the hotel union’s Locals 814 and 11 earlier this year teamed to protest at the nonunion New Otani Hotel in downtown and Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, among others.
Organizers are trying to pressure employers to recognize the union if a majority of employees sign union pledge cards,a process Earl calls “card neutrality”,rather than making the union go through a formal certification election.
Though many hotels are willing to cooperate with the election process, Earl said that method of unionization is less desirable because the union is more limited in its access to employees.
Union organizer Jaime Torres said union officials contacted Crowne Plaza partner Tim Busch prior to the hotel’s opening, but he “refused to talk to us.”
Busch said he has “no understanding of why they picketed.” Busch said he did have a conversation with union officials in which he said he’d meet with them after the hotel’s opening.
Earl, who was reluctant to call the picketing a “kickoff” for Orange County activity, said, “We’re not against the hotels. We think they’re good for Orange County if the rights of the workers are also considered.”
The Crowne Plaza has about 150 of its 384 rooms open and roughly 180 employees. The remainder of the rooms are expected to be open within a few weeks, and the staff number will go up by a couple of dozen. General Manager Jerry O’Connell, a partner in the ownership group, said the hotel did a study of area wages,including some union hotels,prior to hiring. The Crowne Plaza is “very competitive” in its wages, he said, sometimes exceeding wages offered at union hotels.
“We don’t feel it’s necessary to have an outside organization interfere with our relationship with our employees,” O’Connell said.
Officials at other Anaheim-area hotels contacted for this story,including the soon-to-open Homewood Suites by Hilton next door to the Crowne Plaza,declined to comment on the possible effect of increased union activity at their hotels.
But one source said the union has contacted Homewood about unionization,even though that hotel will have fewer than 50 employees.
Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said union activity in Los Angeles is “very aggressive” and that increased activity in OC will make things more difficult for hotels trying to hire staff.
“It’s going to be difficult,” Kyser said. “It’s definitely a seller’s market.”
Kyser said the union is likely to target areas like OC where union activity has been at a standstill because, in Southern California, the traditional union “playgrounds”,defense and automotive,have gone away.
“Every (hotel) opening is an opportunity to get their message across,” Kyser said.
Meanwhile, Walt Disney Co. is continuing to gear up for the opening of its Grand Californian Hotel at California Adventure as well as hiring additional workers,mostly union,at its existing hotels, Disneyland Hotel and Disney’s Paradise Pier. Last week, it held a hospitality job fair at the Disneyland Hotel that drew about 1,000 candidates on the first day alone.
Disney hotels are among those already unionized here, and Kyser said the addition of the Grand Californian to that mix may provide a “yardstick” by which the union will measure other hospitality jobs, eventually resulting in higher wages within the local industry. n
