Unfair Labor Practice Claims Filed In Contract Dispute With SoCal Hotel Workers

The group that represents hotels where workers went on strike earlier this week in Los Angeles and Orange counties filed unfair labor practice claims against the workers’ union with the National Labor Relations Board on Thursday.

According to the Coordinated Bargaining group, the union violated the law by calling for a strike while demanding that the hotels agree to terms unrelated to their employees.

Keith Grossman, spokesperson for the Coordinated Bargaining Group, said over email that the problems include asking the industry to support an L.A. city ballot measure that would require hotels to report available rooms and provide lodging for unhoused people alongside other guests. The ballot measure will go before city of L.A. voters in March 2024. The union also wants hotels to impose a 7% tax on guests at unionized hotels.

“Insisting that these provisions must be in any contract settlement and striking to include them is not only unlawful, but it is also a real obstacle to reaching agreement on a contract,” Grossman said. “If the Union really wanted an agreement to help the employees, it would have dropped these issues long ago instead of taking employees out on strike over them.”

Union's response

Kurt Petersen, co-president of the union representing the hotel workers, UNITE HERE Local 11, responded to the claims saying: “We wish the hotels would stop paying their lawyers thousands of dollars an hour to file frivolous complaints.”

“Right now, hotel workers are facing housing insecurity,” he added. “They’re doubling up, moving farther and farther away from Los Angeles.”

Petersen said that the 7% guest fee the hotel workers union is trying to push forward is intended to replace current fees, with the intention of building housing for hotel workers.

“Right now, when you book a hotel, $250 becomes $300 because of bogus fees,” he said, pointing at costs added on for wireless internet access, for example.

“What we want is to replace these fake fees with fees that would actually help hotel workers,” he added.

The hotel workers went back to work on Wednesday, but union spokesperson María Hernández said the strike could resume at any time.

L.A. mayor weighs in

Thursday morning, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass reacted to the strike in which many workers say they can’t afford ever-growing rents on the wages they’re making.

She said she often gets involved in negotiating between management and employees in strikes like this — as she did with the LAUSD workers’ strike a few months ago — but that it’s sometimes behind the scenes.

“Oftentimes in these situations, I am involved. It is not necessarily very public. Some of this stuff is very sensitive,” Bass said on AirTalk, which airs on LAist 89.3. The strike comes as “this city has become unaffordable,” Bass said.

“A few years ago there was the big fight for $15 an hour,” she added.

But, she said, it’s no longer enough.

“$15 an hour, you can't survive on. So the workers have to be able to survive as well,” Bass said.

“We don't want workers leaving the hotel and sleeping in their car.”