Friday, February 21, 1997
COMMUNITY:
Anti-union practices of New Otani Hotel protested in marchBy
Hannah Miller
Daily Bruin Contributor
About 30 UCLA students and staff joined multiple unions, clergy
and the executive committee of the American Federation of
Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) at a march and
rally in front of the New Otani Hotel in downtown Los Angeles
Wednesday evening.
The 2,000-strong demonstration focused attention on the New
Otani’s anti-union practices, including illegal firings,
videotaping and spying on employees, and the reported intimidation
of its workers.
"This campaign was launched by the New Otani workers and their
union to notify the public that this hotel disrespects workers and
disrespects the community," said Jay Mendoza, boycott director with
the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE).
The New Otani has been the focus of a multi-union labor campaign
for the past two years, which escalated Jan. 24 with a boycott
targeting both the hotel and its owner, Japanese construction
company Kajima Corporation.
For the UCLA students who attended the rally, the situation has
far-reaching implications.
"We need to connect the things we study in class to what happens
off campus," said Alyssa Kang, a longtime student activist with
UCLA’s Asian Pacific Coalition (APC).
Kang’s experience working on community outreach with the New
Otani Support Committee highlights the growing alliance between
students and unions.
The UCLA students with APC and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de
Aztlan (MEChA) volunteered to work as security guards at the march.
Wearing red armbands, they steered the demonstrators from Pershing
Square to the New Otani parking lot, under the stares of patrons in
their hotel rooms.
Over the past two years, a drive by the HERE Local 11 to
unionize the 280 employees of the New Otani has grown into an
international campaign supported by Little Tokyo organizations,
Latino groups, city council members and labor councils.
The march was timed to coincide with the annual meeting of the
executive committee of the AFL-CIO, being held in Los Angeles for
the first time. This strategic move to L.A. has been recognized as
a revitalization of the organizing side of the labor movement,
including the situation at the New Otani.
"We demand that the New Otani rehire, with full back pay, the
workers they illegally fired," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said
to the crowd.
The National Labor Relations Board has found in favor of three
employees illegally fired in 1994 for union activity, but the New
Otani has appealed this decision.
Sweeney also announced his intention to travel to Japan next
month and meet with Kajima and union leaders to resolve the
conflict.
"We support the campaign. It’s very sad that workers have had to
expend such a huge amount of energy for the basic right to
organize," said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor
Research and Education.
"Tourism is the second largest industry in Los Angeles," Wong
said. "There is a huge discrepancy between compensation at the top,
and the poverty wage paid to workers at the bottom."
Most of the work done by UCLA students and staff has been in the
larger context of the campaign, although the UCLA Labor Center is
involved in outreach to bring students to the picket lines outside
the New Otani every Friday.
In addition, the undergraduate student government (USAC) has
passed a resolution in favor of the campaign, and student groups
have visited classes to inform them about the boycott.
As students expressed, broad-based community support is crucial
to these campaigns.
"Knowing that someone cares really matters to New Otani
workers," said Marisol Villegas, a fourth-year economics student.
Villegas was a participant in the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer, a program
to train college students in the techniques of union
organizing.
Local union campaigns stand to benefit from the contributions of
college students, Villegas explained. "We’ve got the energy and the
time," she said.
Many of the students were also enrolled in the Los Angeles
Manufacturing Action Project (LAMAP), a nondepartmental course at
UCLA co-sponsored by the Labor Center. The class focuses on
community outreach, labor organizing, citizenship, and
research.