Separate hotel talks keep unions busy
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
Negotiators prevented strikes at major Waikiki hotels four months ago, but more quiet talks continue — or get under way in the next few months — at a dozen smaller hotels across the Islands.
The hotels aren't nearly the size of the ones that reached agreements with Local 5 of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union — The Hyatt Regency Waikiki Resort & Spa, Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort & Spa and four Sheraton hotels in Waikiki. But collectively, the smaller hotels employ about a quarter of the total Local 5 membership, or 3,500 to 4,000 unionized workers.
At least one hotel, the Imperial Hawaii Resort at Waikiki, has sent letters to its vendors about the possibility of a strike.
The most recent negotiation session in December, wrote managing director Peter Elliott, may "increase the risk that the union may initiate civil disobedience, informational demonstrations as well as calling for and initiating a strike by its members." Elliott was out of town and unavailable for comment.
At the same time, Local 5 leader Eric Gill has to stay on top of separate negotiations.
"It's crazy," Gill said. "Instead of worrying about a possible strike every few years, in the next few months we could have to worry about a possible strike every few days."
It wasn't always this way.
In the past, union leaders had to negotiate only with the Council of Hawaii Hotels, which was broken into committees that represented either Waikiki or Neighbor Island hotels.
Individual hotels began breaking away from the joint talks in the 1980s and the movement accelerated with the 1990 statewide hotel strike that lasted 22 days. By the end of the 1995 negotiations, only The Hyatt Regency, Hilton Hawaiian Village and Waikiki Sheraton hotels were negotiating under the umbrella of the Council of Hawaii Hotels, said Richard Rand, who conducted some of the 1995 negotiations for the hotels.
Many of the other hotels, however, still used the contracts that were negotiated as starting points for their talks.
For the union, separate negotiations can dilute the strength of members who are spread out among smaller hotels, Gill said. Individual talks also can be delayed by outside issues, such as the union's internal leadership disputes of the past few years and the after-effects from Sept. 11 that left thousands of hotel workers unemployed.
Hotel management also can benefit by unified talks, Rand said.
"They have strength in numbers, too," he said. "If they negotiate together, then you don't have the possibility that the union can go to another company and get an agreement and go back to the other company and say, 'Here, sign this.' The con is that you also have the reverse — that you are linked to that company and rise and fall with them."
The result, Rand said, is that the length of the contracts varies from three to five years and other terms "are all over the place."
It's unlikely for now that the trend will shift back toward unified talks, Rand said.
"That would take the voluntary cooperation of all of the properties," he said.
For now, Gill has to keep track of the progress of various talks throughout the Islands.
"By the time we finally get through with this round," he said, "we could be looking at starting up talks all over again with the big Waikiki hotels."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
