Posted on: Sunday, May 22, 2005

Union workers picket resort

By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer

Labor strife continued at Turtle Bay Resort yesterday as union workers walked a picket line to protest what they say are unsafe working conditions.

Traffic was slowed for miles along Kamehameha Highway. A bride and groom glared at the protesters while fighting their way across the highway toward a limousine parked just beyond the picket line.

"We're trying to ask management to take care of certain safety issues," said George Cox, a union member and property operations worker at the resort since 1982.

Among the problems alleged by workers were ungrounded equipment and poor ventilation in the laundry, too many rooms for housekeepers to clean safely in a day and unsafe working conditions in the restaurants.

The protest started at 3 a.m. and was scheduled to end at midnight. At about 5 p.m., more than 80 pickets manned the line.

Abid Butt, vice president and general manager at Turtle Bay Resort, said the company will look closely at complaints and correct conditions as warranted. He said he believes the protest was more indicative of ongoing tensions with Local 5 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union than of safety problems.

Union workers at the resort have been without a contract for 2 1/2 years, and Local 5 has asked other unions and people sympathetic to the union's cause to boycott the hotel.

Butt said a full complement of employees crossed the picket line yesterday, and he alleged that most of the people out on the line were "rent-a-crowd" brought in by Local 5.

Employees and Local 5 officials outside the hotel said nearly 90 percent of the people on the line were Turtle Bay workers, and that the hotel was staffed mostly by managers yesterday.

Kyle Kajihiro of the American Friends Service Committee went out yesterday in support of the union.

He said he'd gone into the hotel with his video camera and was stopped on the way out by the security chief and two security guards. He alleges that the chief grabbed him in a choke hold and threw him to the ground. The other guards grabbed his feet and hands and used pressure to restrain him while they took the tape from his camera and called police.

Butt said a trespasser was detained yesterday but denied violence was used.

Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.