Hotel Illegally Fired Union Backers, Labor Panel Says

The New Otani Hotel, a Little Tokyo landmark embroiled in an escalating battle against a union trying to organize its workers, has been accused by federal officials of illegally firing three housekeepers who were union supporters.

The charge, lodged by a National Labor Relations Board regional office in Los Angeles, marked a victory for Local 11 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union. The union for three years has waged a campaign to represent more than 250 housekeepers, restaurant employees, front desk and other service workers at the Japanese-owned hotel. Since January, it has stepped up its efforts by promoting a boycott of the hotel.

In its complaint, the NLRB regional officials alleged that the New Otani fired the three Latina immigrant housekeepers in February 1995 because they “joined or assisted the union and engaged in concerted activities.” The hotel had said that it fired the three, all 16-year employees, because of a single violation of a company time card rule--one of the housekeepers, the company said, punched out the time cards of the other two.

The NLRB complaint also accused the hotel’s management of “interfering with, restraining and coercing employees” to prevent them from engaging in union activities.

“It proves what we’ve been saying all along, that the New Otani is interfering with the workers’ right to have a union,” said a jubilant Maria Elena Durazo, president of Local 11, which announced the NLRB complaint at a news conference in front of the hotel Thursday.

Durazo, bolstered by the NLRB’s unfair labor practices charge, demanded that the hotel sign a “neutrality agreement” calling for management to recognize the union as the workers’ bargaining agent if a majority sign union cards.

She said the hotel’s pattern of intimidating workers would make a conventional union representation election impossible to run fairly. Union officials said that even if they prevailed in such an election, the company could contest it through legal maneuvers for years.

But the hotel’s management, which has accused the union of intimidation and harassment of workers in a pending lawsuit and a separate claim filed with the NLRB, rejected the union’s plea. Instead, the hotel said it would insist on an NLRB-supervised secret ballot election.

“All of this should be resolved, and it would be resolved any time the union would agree to a secret-ballot election,” said Karl Schmidt, the hotel’s lawyer. “Why won’t they let this group of employees have a vote? The only answer is they know they would lose. . . . I can’t imagine any other union in this town behaving like that.”

Because of union harassment of workers, Schmidt said, there is no way to know if workers are signing union cards of their own free will.

Schmidt also noted that the NLRB charges are only a preliminary step, and that the case will be heard by an administrative law judge in August. Even after that, the case could be further reviewed at NLRB headquarters in Washington or in the federal courts before it is resolved. The housekeepers, if successful, would be eligible for back pay and reinstatement.

Schmidt asserted that the New Otani was justified in firing the three housekeepers because of the single time card violation. “You have to be responsible for your own time,” he said. “It’s an absolute rule.”

Asked whether any of the housekeepers was known to have left work early that day, Schmidt said that issue was “not relevant.”

But Ana Alvarado, one of the dismissed housekeepers and a single mother with three children, said she felt vindicated by the NLRB’s action. The hotel’s management, she said, called her “a liar and a thief” but now, “we can say proudly that it isn’t true.”