Losing candidates seek new Local 5 election

By Glenn Scott
Advertiser Staff Writer

In the latest move in an already lengthy struggle for leadership of the state's largest hotel worker's union, Tony Rutledge, Arlene Ilae and Kaui Akana want a new election.

Listing 28 objections to last week's elections for the top posts with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 5, those three losing candidates have submitted a nine-page document asking their international union to toss out the results and hold a new vote.

They contend the election was premature, unfair and improperly supervised.

"At first, we said we wouldn't object," Ilae said yesterday. "But when we found out about all of the wrongdoings, we felt we had to."

Rutledge, who ran the union for 14 years as financial secretary-treasurer, lost in the July 6 tally by 21 votes to rival Eric Gill. Rutledge also lost by a slim margin in a March 2000 election mandated after federal authorities ruled that Gill's name had been wrongly left off the ballot in a previous election.

Gill said yesterday the objections lack merit and that he is confident the election results will stand.

But the objections once again raise the prospect of continued struggles at the union, where a relatively even split in political alliances has complicated and delayed efforts to negotiate several key labor contracts.

With 5,300 local union members voting last week, Gill won 47.7 percent to Rutledge's 47.4 percent. A third candidate, Estan Reynon, had 4.9 percent.

Orlando Soriano and Hernando Ramos Tan, both running on the Gill ticket, edged Ilae and Akana for president and vice president.

Rutledge was en route yesterday to the international union convention in Los Angeles and was unavailable for comment.

The trio's petition was submitted Wednesday to John Wilhelm, general president of the International Union of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees, and provided yesterday to the media. Ilae said her group hoped the matter could be addressed during this week's convention or soon afterward.

But Wilhelm, reached at the convention, said the trio's request probably won't be resolved quickly. Their objections — essentially a demand for a new election — will first go for a determination to Sherri Chiesa, the union-appointed trustee who ran the election.

"She will investigate the basis of their objections and render a decision," Wilhelm said.

Her ruling then may be appealed to the international union's executive committee.

Gill, also at the convention, brushed off the objections as a predictable post-election tactic.

"There's nothing there that will require a new election," he said.

Gill said he wouldn't object if Chiesa or other international leaders called for a recount of the 5,320 ballots in last week's tally.

In their objections, though, the Rutledge group asserts that a recount would be unreliable because the ballots were not properly sealed for safekeeping Friday evening at the conclusion of the vote tally and have been accessible since then at the Local 5 office.

In another objection, the trio said the election never should have occurred prior to a federal ruling on an earlier complaint that Gill and Soriano had misused money by spending without board approval.

"We strongly feel that those charges should have been heard first," said Ilae.

They also claim that Soriano and his backers paid some fellow Filipino union members for their votes.

Asked yesterday whether the group could produce witnesses, Ilae said that evidence to support that claim so far is "hearsay."

Disagreement and election challenges are nothing new for the local, where rival factions have sought control. Chiesa, the international's Western regional director, sought to underplay the rift by highlighting the vitality of competing ideas, declaring more than once that "democracy is alive and well at Local 5."

Unions don't usually call two elections in two years, but last week's became necessary after the international union, concerned about a divisive split among Local 5 leaders, placed the local under trusteeship and eventually scheduled the new election in hopes of resolving differences.

Gill and his supporters won a majority of 12 seats on the local's 15-member executive board, wiping out the stalemate that occurred last year when the pro-Rutledge board majority often opposed Gill's proposals.

Ilae said the bid for a new election may seem hard to take, but the Rutledge team deserves its chance to regain control and to improve the local's bargaining prowess.

"I know this is frustrating for the members," she said. "But we've been in the business for many, many years, and we'll do what's right."

You can reach Glenn Scott at gscott@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8064.