Hotel workers want increases

By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer

Leaders of the union representing thousands of Waikiki hotel workers said yesterday they believe their employers have largely recovered from the tourism slump that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, and they plan to ask for wage and benefit increases in contract talks beginning this spring.

Members of Local 5 Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union registered at a conference at the Hawai'i Convention Center to kick off contract negotiations with major Waikiki hotels this month. Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser

Gill and others from Local 5 spoke at a conference to kick off the union's contract talks with seven major Waikiki hotels, scheduled to begin this month.

More than 500 union members had attended a morning session at the Hawai'i Convention Center, Gill said. A separate session was expected to attract several hundred more workers yesterday afternoon.

About 5,000 Waikiki hotel workers are covered by contracts between Local 5 and the four Sheraton Waikiki hotels, the Hilton Hawaiian Village, the Hyatt Regency Waikiki and the Renaissance 'Ilikai Waikiki.

Since Sept. 11, hundreds of hotel workers have been laid off or had their hours cut because of the drastic drop in business that followed the attacks.

Many of those who kept their jobs have faced increased or unreasonable workloads, union leaders say.

As a result, Local 5 officials said they expect to make the issues of workloads and calling employees back to work priorities in their contract talks this year.

"I like my job — in fact, I love my job," Local 5 member Richelle Rodero-Miyasoto, a PBX operator at the 'Ilikai, told the gathering. "But in the last year the workload has really changed. They make PBX on all shifts do different kinds of work."

Gill said the union also planned to ask all the hotels for the same standard of wages and benefits even though the properties are not negotiating as a group, as in previous years.

He told union members yesterday that in spite of the loss of business after Sept. 11, O'ahu hotels had the third-highest occupancy rates in the country last year and the fifth-highest average room rates.

He said O'ahu luxury hotels were 38 percent more profitable than the average for luxury hotels last year.

Murray Towill, president of the Hawai'i Hotel Association, said yesterday that his organization does not participate in contract negotiations and he was reluctant to comment on the union's numbers because he did not know the source of the figures.

However, he said, "historically we have had higher occupancy rates than other destinations or locations. We've also had higher room rates. That's driven by (Hawai'i's) higher costs. That's just been a reality. And we've needed to have much higher occupancy rates to cover costs."

The Waikiki Sheraton hotels are operated by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

Keith Vieira, Starwood's senior vice president and director of operations for Hawai'i and French Polynesia, said yesterday that tourism for the first three months of the year had been better than expected, but still "significantly behind" the first quarters of 2001 and 2000.

"While we're cautiously optimistic that things will continue to improve. We still are behind," he said. "It's our hope things will improve so we can all get back to as good times as possible.

"In our case, we've reopened restaurants and certain services that business levels don't dictate we should, but we did so to provide good service to our guests and bring back as many employees as possible," Vieria said. "We, too, hope things get back to a full recovery so we can be on a positive note."

Of the upcoming contract talks, Vieira said, "We're optimistic that both we and Eric (Gill) and his negotiating team want to do the best thing for our employees. Sometimes the unions forget that they're our employees. ... We want to come up with a good and fair contract for our employees."

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