By Teresa Rochester

At the height of a five-year union battle, the Miramar Sheraton's former general manager appeared as Darth Vadar in a swirl of smoke before an audience of maids, bellhops, cooks and dishwashers and denounced their fight to keep a union at the luxury beachfront hotel frequented by President Bill Clinton.

Last Friday, with Darth Vadar gone and the hotel under new ownership and management, those same workers voted overwhelmingly to keep the newly renamed Miramar Fairmont as Santa Monica's only unionized hotel. Cheers erupted from the crowd as representatives of the National Labor Relations Board read the results -- 161 to 7 -- in the hotel's Starlight Ballroom, ending a fierce that spawned Santa Monica's current living wage war.

"It was amazing," said Hector Cuatepotzo, who has worked for the hotel for 10 years in room service and worked on the union's organizing committee. "It was really, really hard on all the workers. It was so hard to work like that. We were scared. I can smell the freedom. This is like a holiday for me. Last night, I couldn't sleep."

"This today symbolizes what working together means," said general manager Karl Buchta, who took over the position when former owners Fujita Corporation USA sold the hotel last August to Maritz, Wolff &Co., which has several unionized hotels in its chain that includes the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco and the Four Seasons Santa Barbara Biltmore. "The employees are very loyal employees to this hotel and we're very proud to be associated with them."

During the height of the campaign to bust the hotel's 40-year-old union - sparked by an employee's 1995 petition to decertify it - the former management depicted union officials as Hitler in a drawing posted by the employee time clock. The result of their effort was a 1997 vote to decertify the union - a decision thrown out by the National Labor Relations Board, who charged the hotel with waging an unfair labor campaign.

"The more they threw at us the stronger we got and we knew we would last one day longer," said Kurt Peterson, lead organizer for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees, Local 814. "The amount of sacrifice these folks have given, I can't tell you how many times people wanted to give up but they persevered. Victory is very sweet."

As word of the worker's plight swept through the city, community members mobilized their own campaign against the hotel, arriving in mass and wearing union stickers, for daily meals. Stephanie Monroe, an organizer with Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, said hotel management would pull workers off the floor and have managers serve the protestors.

"The community developed close relations with the workers. Before that, none of the people knew who was serving them," Monroe said. "We took council members to the workers' homes."

Out of the relationship between the Miramar workers and the community was born Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism (SMART), which laid the foundation for an unprecedented living wage proposal. SMART's initial proposal, which sparked a heated war with the city's business community, calls for private businesses with 50 or more employees within the city's lucrative Coastal Zone to receive $10.69 an hour plus benefits.

The campaign for a living wage kicked off with a spirited rally last June attended by 300 community members and workers - one of whom dressed as Darth Vadar -- in the sanctuary of The Church in Ocean Park. Last Friday workers and their supporters again gathered in the church for a victory party.

"Today for me is a big day. A very big day, because we won the election," Avelino Alverez, a 24-year hotel cook, said as his coworkers danced to blaring cumbias under the glow of disco lights and swirling smoke. "It's amazing after five years of struggling it's all worth it.

"For all these years we lived a very bitter life," Alverez said. "We never imagined this amazing victory. We won this struggle but it's not the end; we now have to continue the struggle. We have to organize other Santa Monica hotels. Now the other hotels can't say they can't afford a decent wage. We did it."

Alverez, a Santa Monica resident who shares a one bedroom apartment with his wife and four daughters, said that with the union in place, employees are guaranteed job security for the next five years. Hotel management and union officials are set to sign a contract next week that union organizers say is "generous." Workers said that under the new contract, they can choose between two HMOs, receive raises, a pension and bonuses.

"Most importantly we can demand respect and justice on the job," Alverez said.

"I think this is inspiring," said Santa Monica Mayor Ken Genser, who was joined at the victory party by four other council members. "The Miramar workers have shown us that in spite of the huge effort to deny them their union, that when people stand together and insist on their rights, they can prevail. I hope this is the first step to ensuring a fair wage and just working conditions for our workers in Santa Monica."