Author: Linni Kral
Occidental students will join the Unite Here Union Campaign in an act of civil disobedience at the Glendale Hilton Thursday, March 22. Oxy students will attend to protest the treatment of workers at the hotel and several will be voluntarily arrested and kept overnight.
“Workers in Glendale want a union,” Phil Barney (senior) said. “But the hotel says no and threatens to fire them.” Barney was involved with the march that took place Sept. 28, 2006, where 300 people, including several Oxy students, were arrested to protest the low wages of workers at hotels near the Los Angeles International Airport. This protest brought the passing of a living wage ordinance for those workers, however, the legislation is still being challenged in the courts.
The Hilton Hotels corporation is currently cooperating with Unite Here. The Glendale hotel, however, is owned by Eagle Hospitality and only borrows the name Hilton while operating independently. Eagle Hospitality has been unresponsive to strikes and petitions from their workers.
Benito Cortez, a Glendale Hilton worker, spoke to students interested in helping the hotel workers Wednesday, March 7. Cortez said that 75 percent of workers are supportive of the plan to implement a union. “Management positions are anti-union, and some employees hired through agencies, such as housekeepers, already have their own things going,” Cortez said.
Workers generally have the option of unionizing by signing a document in front of their bosses and managers in an election scenario, or by a card check, which would only require them to sign something in front of their union manager. The people in charge of the hotel choose between these and most frequently choose the election, which requires that all workers be present. The owners also choose the date and can postpone it due to absences.
“There is an intimidation factor,” Cortez said, referring to the election method of unionizing, which features entirely English ballots. Cortez came to Oxy with Arturo Alvarez, the student organizer for Unite Here. Alvarez has also worked at Hiltons and experienced dangerous conditions that resulted in him being electrocuted and receiving stitches for various cuts.
“A lot of people were laid-off post 9/11, then the tourism picked back up and brought work back but they didn’t bring workers back,” Alvarez said. “You’re doing the job of three people, jobs you haven’t been trained at doing and that is how you get hurt.”
Unite Here witnessed the amount of student support for hotel workers at the Sept. 28 march and hired Alvarez to organize students from five different Southern California schools, including California State Long Beach and the Claremont Colleges. He recently worked with Oxy students to organize a smaller protest at the Glendale Hilton on Thursday, March 8. The Glendale mayor planned a prayer breakfast that morning. Protesters gathered outside with the clergy members, who said prayers outside of the hotel.
“The Glendale Hilton has already lost $1 million from the boycotts,” Barney said.
The March 22 protest is expected to have greater worker and community support than the March 8 vigil as well as media coverage, Barney said. The number of arrests are not expected exceed those of the Sept. 28 march. The Glendale police force is also expected to be less cooperative. Those arrested in the Sept. 28 march were put on a bus, taken to spend the night in jail at various stations in the area, and released the next day.
One month later, those arrested attended meetings in downtown Los Angeles, where they were told not to do it again for one year and the crime was removed from their record.
“Usually [the hotels] fight really hard,” Alvarez said. “The biggest obstacle is getting the company to be neutral, they don’t have to be supportive, just neutral.”
Students that wish to join the fight for hotel workers and participate in the protest should meet at the fountain at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, March 22, where transportation will be provided to the Glendale Hilton.
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