Unions rallying together

By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer

Off and on for more than two months now, former employees of the Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel have been walking a picket line on the sidewalk in front of their old work place at the diamondhead end of Kalakaua Avenue.

The Hawaiian Waikiki Beach Hotel became the Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel. Advertiser library photo

"We are still fighting hard for our money," said Willie Kepa, a food service worker with 24 years of experience at the hotel. Kepa has been picketing even though she recently found a job at another Waikiki hotel. "We're trying to encourage our co-workers to do the same thing."

Former workers, however, are not the only union members who have been rallying in front of the hotel entrance on Paoakalani Avenue, steps away from Waikiki Beach. In a resurgence of solidarity some observers say Hawai'i has not seen in decades, the ILWU pickets have been joined by other unions, including the University of Hawai'i faculty union and Local 5 of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union— the latter a former rival of the ILWU.

While the other unions say they are genuinely supportive of the hotel workers, the underlying explanation for the unusual show of unity stretches far beyond Kalakaua Avenue, analysts say. The Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel has become a flashpoint for Hawai'i organized labor, which has come under increasing pressure in the past several years.

Recent external threats to public-sector unions include state civil-service reforms, calls for privatization of some public-service jobs and the contract disputes that led to strikes by public school teachers and UH faculty in April.

Pressures on private-sector unions include the closings in the 1990s of sugar and pineapple plantations statewide, which meant layoffs for thousands of union workers. Hawai'i's lengthy economic slump in the same decade contributed to an increasingly competitive marketplace that made employers cautious about agreeing to union requests for pay increases. And the growth of the global economy has taken jobs out of state while bringing in new employers less inclined to work with organized labor.

"The Aston struggle that the ILWU has is really a concern of ours, because our unionized properties are being bought and sold like they were pogs or trading cards," said Morrison Luka, a spokesman and business representative with Local 5, which represents workers at 13 major Waikiki hotels. "For us to sit on the side and watch the ILWU take on Aston by themselves was not something that was in the stars for us. It was a way to show that if you can do this in Waikiki, you can do this to us — and that's not going to happen."

Adds William Puette, director of the Center for Labor Education and Research at UH-West O'ahu, "This is an issue of how workers are treated in our economy, and how appropriate that is and whose point of view is being reflected in all of this. It's symbolic. It's a much larger issue: What kind of rights should workers have?"

In the spotlight

The recent events at the Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel reflect the complex web of pressures facing many Hawai'i companies — and, by extension, Hawai'i unions — as global enterprise re-writes the rules of doing business locally.

Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 142 have picketed outside the hotel, demanding severance pay and vacation benefits that weren't paid. Advertiser library photos Advertiser library photo

ILWU officials and local observers, however, say that letting go of union employees with long years of service violates an unwritten law of doing business in Hawai'i.

Raymond Camacho, the ILWU's O'ahu division director, said the union is prepared for a lengthy battle on behalf of the former Hawaiian Waikiki Beach employees.

"We'd like to get some justice for the workers, and sometimes justice takes time," he said. "We're committed to taking this fight as far and as long as we need to."

Some observers say the ILWU, which has 22,000 members state-

wide, may be fighting especially hard because the property was the union's only Waikiki hotel. The ILWU represents workers at one other O'ahu property, the Honolulu Airport Hotel. But the union, whose members include nearly 12,000 hotel workers, historically has organized Neighbor Island properties, while Local 5 holds sway in Waikiki. Local 5 has 10,710 members, of whom 8,400 are hotel workers.

Camacho disagrees that the Waikiki location makes the current struggle relatively more significant.

"If it were out at Turtle Bay, we would have taken the same position," he said. "... I can understand how that could be a theory of people, but that's not it. Whether it was a hotel or any other type of business that we represented, if it happened the same way in another industry, we would have taken the same stance."

He also disputes the suggestion that the union is particularly vulnerable because in June employees at the Outrigger Wailea Resort on Maui took the unusual step of voting out their representation by the ILWU in a 208-70 count.

"We're not driven by the industry or any kind of internal politics," he said. "...We have setbacks and then we have advances."

Strength in numbers

Even as they band together to support former Hawaiian Waikiki Beach Hotel workers, however, union leaders are preparing for a larger fight, which Camacho says centers on "workers' rights and job security and fair treatment."

"I think it's symbolic that whether it's the Aston dispute or the teachers' strike, that labor unions — public- and private-sector — are all coming to the awareness that we need to band together, that our issues do intersect," he said.

Thomas Fujikawa, business manager/financial secretary of Local 1186 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said he sees the beginnings of solidarity among Hawai'i unions.

"We're working on it," he said. "A lot will hinge on next year's election. It's incumbent among organized labor to get organized. A lot of the heads of the unions have recognized this and we are trying to work towards that end."

One key step in this regard has been the tentative effort of public- and private-sector unions to seal the historic divide that has separated them. Union analysts say the two groups have always had fundamentally different interests: The health of public-sector unions depends largely on decisions by elected state officials, one observer noted, while the private-sector unions operate under the very different pressures of the market economy.

Some say the bridge-building began in 1999, when private-sector unions turned out at the Legislature to support public-sector unions' lobbying efforts against some civil-service reforms. This year's public-school teachers' strike also helped cement relations between the two sides, observers say.

"We don't have a big divided line like before," Fujikawa said. "We're trying to put that together. The basic emphasis is that union people represent working people, and that should be first. I think we should do our darnedest to work towards that end."

Organized labor took its coalition-building efforts public last Sunday, with a labor unity march from Kapi'olani Community College to the Waikiki Shell. The estimated 1,100 participants included members of the University of Hawai'i Professional Assembly, the Hawai'i State Teachers Association, the ILWU, Local 5 and the Hawai'i Government Employees Association. The unions looped around the Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel several times before continuing on to Labor Day weekend activities in Kapi'olani Park.

Ben Bergen, an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, took a break from walking to talk about his reasons for taking part in the march.

He said he joined the march "to show support for my colleagues. Obviously at the university there's been a lot of labor activity in the last year."

He said he was familiar with the hotel workers' dispute and the reason for the marchers' presence.

"The different unions have very different working conditions and very different labor debates," Bergen said. "But the idea of labor unity is one I think is worth promoting."

As labor attempts to build a coalition in Hawai'i, it has certain advantages. Of all the states, Hawai'i last year ranked second behind New York in the percentage of union members in the work force — 24.8 percent, or nearly one in four workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. That compares with New York's 25.5 percent, the bureau. said. In California, by comparison, union members made up 16 percent of the work force last year.

But organized labor's power in Hawai'i is weaker than it was when union plantation labor accounted for a larger share of Hawai'i's workers. In 1970, union members made up 33 percent of the Hawai'i work force, according to Lawrence Boyd, a labor economist with the Center for Labor Education and Research at UH-West O'ahu. That's one in three workers.

Declining strength is just one of the challenges that Hawai'i labor unions face in their coalition-building efforts. Another is a perception by the public that unions, in part through requests for wage increases and sometimes inflexible work contracts, have contributed to Hawai'i's economic doldrums.

"I think the business community has created a bogeyman, and the bogeyman is labor unions in Hawai'i," Camacho said. "It's been going on for the last several election cycles."

Changing tide

Union leaders say even former friends of labor, such as state Democratic lawmakers, have changed sides.

"In the past the unions relied upon the commitment of the Democratic party to the concepts of unions and collective bargaining, and what you've seen happening over the last eight years in the state Legislature is a constant assault on those principles," said J.N. Musto, executive director of the University of Hawai'i Professional Assembly.

Public opinion about unions also has been shaped by highly charged contests among union leaders for control of their members — such as the recent struggles between Eric Gill and Tony Rutledge for leadership of Local 5. These public battles can have the effect of making those outside of unions suspicious, if not cynical, about the motives of union leaders, observers say.

Some union leaders say they recognize that, to be responsive to Hawai'i's working people today, they will have to adjust.

"It's a very challenging time," said Luka, of Local 5. "The philosophies of the people who administer the unions have to change. Our membership is changing, so their demands and wants and desires change as well. The younger workers — they're not staying (in the union) as long. Whereas the 10-year, 15-year guys stayed in that long. So our function is to address those concerns as well ...We have to change our representation. "

One of the most fundamental challenges facing Hawai'i unions today, union leaders say, is convincing nonunion workers that organized labor speaks for them as well.

"There's kind of this growing sensitivity or awareness amongst the unions that we can't continue to just look inward towards our members and our specific interests," said Camacho. "We have to look outward on how our issues intersect, not just amongst ourselves, but with the general public. Because the majority of the general public are working people, too — working people and working families. So we have a lot in common with the general public. Whether they pay union dues or are part of a union organization, everybody's working for a living — or at least the majority of us are."

Reach Susan Hooper at shooper@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8064.