Hotel Settles Labor Charges but Remains Staunch on Key Issue

By Jorge Casuso

Feb. 19 -- Union leaders are hailing a settlement they say will give workers at the DoubleTree Guest Suites Hotel the freedom of speech to unionize, but management contends the agreement will have no effect on ongoing policy.

In either case, the settlement agreement reached with the National Labor Relations Board will likely fuel an intense labor dispute at the hotel on School District property behind City Hall.

Under the agreement, the hotel will post a notice informing employees of their right to form a union and remove discipline against a union leader. The hotel also will not prohibit employees from wearing pro-union buttons, prevent them from discussing wages and working conditions and discipline them for engaging in organizing actions protected by the National Labor Relations Act.

"For months, the hotel has completely decimated free speech in the workplace," said Kurt Petersen, director of organizing for the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Union Local 11.

"It was fine for managers to wage their anti-union campaign but workers could not speak about the union," Petersen said. "This Agreement tells the DoubleTree that their workers' constitutional rights do not end when they enter the hotel."

Hotel management called the settlement a "business decision" and said that the hotel has not violated any labor laws.

"By the terms of the settlement, Doubletree did not admit it violated the law in any manner," said general manager Francois Khoury. "Given we did not admit to any violations, all we agreed to do in this settlement is to follow the law. Our position is our management team has always, and will always, follow the law. We've been telling our employees this from day one.

"We made a business decision to end what was a relatively minor legal matter, but would have cost more in time and energy than it was worth," Khoury said. "Most of the allegations were highly technical in nature, such as 'overbroad' handbook violations, which the union agreed, hadn't been enforced anyway."

Khoury contends that the union is engaging in word play to claim a victory that is in fact hollow. For example, he notes that under the agreement, the DoubleTree "will not promulgate, maintain or enforce any rule or dress code provision that discriminatorily prohibits our employees from wearing insignias or buttons."

Khoury argues that the hotel never discriminated against hotel workers by not letting them wear union buttons because all buttons are banned y company policy.

When workers wore the buttons after the agreement was announced, Khoury said, management gave them two choices -- take them off or go home. All the workers took the buttons off, he said.

"Nothing changed basically," Khoury said. "They (the union leaders) are playing on the language."

Union representatives hope the settlement with the hotel -- which they say has come under increasing criticism from labor, religious and community activists -- will pave the way for a "card check election," like the one Loews management agreed to in December.

The "card check" election requires hotel management to remain neutral while workers decide whether to sign union authorization cards.

"This settlement moves us in the right direction," Petersen said. "We are confident that the DoubleTree will come to understand that a card check agreement is in the best interests of everyone-the hotel, the workers and the community. Loews has set an example that the DoubleTree would do well to emulate."

But Khoury said the DoubleTree would continue to oppose a "card check" election. Instead, hotel officials are willing to hold an election supervised by the NLRB, a process the union argues is faulty because it allows hotel management to take a position and the result can be appealed.

"Our position remains the same now as before the settlement," Khoury said. "Our employees have a right to choose the union or not choose the union, but the choice must be theirs, made through a government supervised secret ballot election."

In November 2000, the City-owned Viceroy Hotel (formerly the Pacific Shore) became Santa Monica's first unionized hotel in more than half a century after workers overwhelmingly approved a union in a "card check" election. The election was mandated by an unprecedented lease agreement approved by the pro-labor City Council.