400 union supporters protest at Waikiki hotel

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hundreds of union members marched yesterday on the Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel, chanting slogans, blowing whistles, banging cookware and demanding fair treatment.

Former hotel employees and their supporters marched at the Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel yesterday. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser

The demonstration was held to support more than 200 ILWU hotel workers who were fired from their jobs in June. The workers, some of whom are approaching retirement age, want severance and vacation pay.

The former employees were backed in their demands yesterday by more than 400 union sympathizers, among them 300 conventioneers from the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, who left their activities at the Sheraton Waikiki to join the protest at the Aston.

"We have union members from all over," said Robert Girald, vice president of the ILWU Local 142. "Carpenters, Teamsters — you name it."

Members of the Musicians Union, University of Hawai'i Professional Association and Local 5, which also represents hotel workers in Hawai'i, attended.

Until earlier this year, the Aston was the Hawaiian Waikiki Beach Hotel, owned by Otaka Inc. Most of more than 270 service workers employed there were members of ILWU Local 142.

In May, the hotel was placed in receivership. The employees were terminated in June. Leucadia National Corp. made the highest bid for the hotel and chose Aston Hotels and Resorts to manage it.

The Aston hired 100 people to staff the hotel. Twenty-five of them were former Otaka employees, said Kelvin M. Bloom, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Aston Hotels and Restaurants. Five more Otaka employees were offered jobs but declined them.

Bloom said the hotel needed a smaller staff because some of the rooms are under renovation, the restaurant has not yet reopened and Aston has its own centralized office for administrative employees.

Aston manages 30 properties in Hawai'i. Two of them are unionized, and both were inherited that way, Bloom said.

Bloom said he sympathizes with the former employees of the Waikiki Beach Hotel, but he never considered them Aston employees and did not think Aston was responsible for their severance or vacation pay.

"I think the union leadership is clearly targeting the wrong party," he said.

Aston also did not feel responsible for hiring the previous staff members, he said. The company, he said, chose employees with characteristics like the company's vision of the revitalized hotel: "Energy, excitement, enthusiasm."

Yunghee Han, a longtime hotel employee who attended the march, said she saw a clear difference between those who were hired and those who were let go.

"They hired all the young ones," she said.