Hundreds of hotel workers in Hollywood and Pasadena walked out this morning, kicking off a third wave of rolling strikes to hit Southern California this summer.
Workers from 1 Hotel West Hollywood, the Andaz West Hollywood, the W Hollywood, DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel San Pedro, Hilton Glendale, Hyatt Place Pasadena and the Sky Terrace Restaurant walked out starting at 5 a.m.
Workers are picketing for higher wages and better benefits and working conditions. Unite Here Local 11 says hotel employees are forced into long commutes because their pay hasn’t kept pace with soaring housing costs.
This wave of strikes comes after a tense bargaining session Tuesday at the Westin Bonaventure, the only hotel that has averted a strike after reaching a tentative deal before contracts representing some 15,000 workers expired June 30. The union mounted a brief strike during the Fourth of July holiday weekend in downtown Los Angeles, followed by others near Los Angeles International Airport and Disneyland last week.
During Tuesday’s negotiations, a hotel industry group introduced a new contract proposal. Keith Grossman, an attorney representing a coalition of 44 Southern California hotels, on Tuesday said that the proposal represented an improved wage offer, but it was rejected by the union.
“We are extremely disappointed that Local 11 refuses to bargain in good faith,” Grossman said. “Local 11 continues to signal that it is more interested in its political agenda than negotiating to reach an agreement.”
But Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, said that the new wage proposal “moved backwards” and that hotel representatives “walked out” of the bargaining session.
Unite Here Local 11 vowed more strikes at hotels across Los Angeles and Orange counties. The session ended abruptly, Petersen said, after the union put forth a new proposal that requires employers to offer permanent jobs to replacement workers brought in during the strike.
In the middle of the city’s “hot labor summer,” hotel workers, screenwriters and actors have overlapped in the strikes.
Christopher Granlund is a food runner at the W in West Hollywood, where he helps expedite orders between customers and the kitchen. He works 30 to 35 hours a week at the hotel and about 20 hours as a contracted security guard at two nightclubs in Little Tokyo and Hollywood, and picks up acting gigs when he can. He said his rent has increased from $1,800 to $2,000 a month in the last three years.
Since the second weekend of July when workers began pickets, Granlund said, the W has shifted from a full-service breakfast to a buffet.
“We can’t make special orders. There has been less turnout, and it feels less personal,” he said.
Granlund, a Marine veteran, moved to Los Angeles in 2018 to pursue an education at an acting conservatory with help from the GI Bill. Preparing for auditions takes up an additional four to five hours in his week.
“Higher wages would mean I could free up one of my jobs. It would give me a more comfortable sense of living to the point where I’m not afraid to take one day off to work on something,” Granlund said.
Unite 11 has accused hotels such as the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Dana Point and Fairfield Inn & Suites in El Segundo of failing to hire Black workers as full-time employees while bringing in Black workers as replacement labor.
In the wake of that allegation, U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) and 20 other members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter Thursday to the University of California Board of Regents, the operator of Laguna Cliffs, requesting more information by July 31 on the hotel’s approach to complying with federal statutes and regulations regarding fair employment. That request comes after 25 California lawmakers sent a letter July 6 to Joe Garciaros, director of human resources at Laguna Cliffs, urging the hotel to negotiate a fair contract and offer permanent employment to Black temp workers brought in during the strikes.
Representatives from Laguna Cliffs and Fairfield Inn couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.
Petersen said that the union is reaching out to meeting organizers asking them to move their gatherings out of Los Angeles because the union can’t “guarantee labor peace.”
In a letter this week, the union asked the American Political Science Assn. to cancel its 2023 annual meeting from Aug. 31 to Sept. 3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center and the J.W. Marriott Los Angeles LA Live. The convention is expected to bring in almost 6,000 academics in political science to the city.
“Our struggle for a living wage is the same for all working people in Los Angeles, from teachers and adjunct professors to hotel workers to actors and writers,” the letter stated. “We believe that unless the hotel industry shares its historic profits, we may soon have no option but to call a boycott of the city of Los Angeles.”
