Hotels Targeted in Union Drive

A union representing Los Angeles-area hotel and restaurant workers launched a high-profile organizing campaign Wednesday, marching through Downtown streets and taking their demands for better wages and working conditions to city officials and tourism representatives.

“We want the people of Los Angeles to know how difficult it is for us to survive in these conditions,� said Maria Rivera, a 40-year-old hotel employee and mother of three who was handing out leaflets explaining the workers’ plight to visitors at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Wednesday’s action was an effort to galvanize public support for the largely invisible corps of hotel maids, restaurant busboys, amusement park workers and other tourism mainstays.

The $8-billion regional tourism industry, the area’s second largest after manufacturing, employs an estimated 500,000 people, most of them immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Fewer than 15,000 work with union contracts; many toil for near-minimum wages.

Wednesday’s coordinated union action, targeting the tourism trade, unfolded a day after the Los Angeles police union--mired in difficult contract negotiations with the city--began posting billboards warning people about crime. Mayor Richard Riordan deplored the tactic and tourism industry representatives criticized the strategy as potentially harmful to the local economy.

Representatives of Local 11 of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union--organizers of Wednesday’s action--disassociated themselves from the police initiative. Calling their effort a long-term strategy to assist hundreds of thousands of workers, Local 11 leaders described the police effort as a one-time negotiating ploy that could frighten away prospective visitors.

“We want tourists to come to L.A., but we want them to come to a union L.A.,� said Local 11 spokeswoman Madeline Janis-Aparicio.

Two years ago, the same union sparked a furor when it sent out a video to convention planners nationwide, contrasting images of Los Angeles-area beaches, boutiques and fancy hotels with scenes of the poverty and violence endemic in the neighborhoods where many workers reside. The police union plans to circulate a videotape highlighting crime in Los Angeles if its contract dispute is not settled.

In leaflets handed out Wednesday on Downtown streets and at Los Angeles International Airport, union activists declared: “We are the backbone of L.A.’s vital tourism industry--and we live in poverty.�

Amanda Escobar, a 37-year-old native of El Salvador and a mother of two who was among those outside the Convention Center, lamented: “These hotel owners become multimillionaires off our hard work.�

Union organizers are currently targeting several Downtown and airport-area hotels for unionization drives. Their hope is that successes will eventually spread to other service industries in a city not known as a bastion of unionism.

“Union representation is the best way to improve conditions� said Maria Elena Durazo, president of Local 11.

In cities more friendly to unions, such as San Francisco and New York, wages of hotel workers often average 50% more than salaries for comparable jobs in Los Angeles, she noted.

The union, Durazo said, is seeking so-called neutrality accords from operators of new hotels. Under such agreements--long resisted in Los Angeles, union officials say--management agrees to refrain from opposing organizing drives.

Durazo and others brought the issue up during meetings Wednesday with Deputy Mayor Robin Kramer and representatives of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau. No guarantees emerged.

Unionists view the tourism trade--particularly big Downtown and airport-area hotels--as an industry benefiting from a myriad of public subsidies in the form of tax breaks, land discounts and other aid. City redevelopment officials dispute this view, saying the hotels pay fair market value for their projects.

Nonetheless, union leaders argue that city officials have a role in helping workers improve their standards of living.