On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 8, police moved in to cordon off the doors of the Summit Rodeo, a pricy small hotel nestled among still pricier retail establishments on Beverly Hills’ priciest street. They had been summoned by hotel management to preserve the sanctity of the lobby from the wild men looming just outside: L.A. Episcopal Bishop Frederick Borsch, Suffragen Bishop Chester Talton and Reverend James Lawson (Martin Luther King Jr.’s onetime mentor in nonviolence), not to mention two dozen Methodist ministers and a menacing passel of rabbis who had just completed a mini-seder on the sidewalk outside the hotel.
Fully 60 priests, rabbis and ministers, all in clerical garb, had walked in procession to Summit Rodeo to implore management there to negotiate a contract with its workers, who had labored for two years without one. They came bearing the report of a rabbinic commission assembled by the
Jewish Labor Committee, alleging that management has unjustly fired one-third of its 90 employees — disproportionately the most pro-union workers — over the past couple years. And when the clerics were denied entrance, they laid some Passover bitter herbs on the doorstep — an offering, said
Rabbi Neal Comess-Daniels, signifying "the taste of inequality, the sting of frustration when one speaks but is not heard." They made different offerings at their next stops, presenting token gifts of milk and honey to the managers of the Regent Beverly Wilshire and the Beverly Hilton, signifying appreciation for those hotels’ signing on to the precedent-setting agreement that Hotel & Restaurant Employees Local 11 crafted earlier this year. In January, with much fanfare and the personal blessings of noted Catholic layman
Richard Riordan, Local 11 announced a contract with downtown-area hotels that set a new standard for service-sector work in Los Angeles. The contract raised the hourly base pay for housekeepers from $8.15 to $11.05 over the life of the contract, and committed the hotels to holding open positions for their immigrant workers whose papers aren’t in order. At that time, none of the Westside hotels with which the union was negotiating — including such flagship enterprises as the
Beverly Wilshire, the Beverly Hilton, the Century Plaza and the
Bel Air — agreed to these terms. It was hard to argue they couldn’t afford it while their downtown counterparts could: In Beverly Hills, according to a recent
L.A. Business Journalstory, occupancy rates are up to 82 percent, and the average room goes for $281 a night. But with the old contract slated to expire on April 15, the Westside put up a united front against any encroachments of decency. And then it started to crack. Maybe it was the union members’ authorization of a dues increase (by a three-to-one margin) to establish a strike fund — a first for the hotel union’s L.A. local. Maybe it was all those member mobilizations in the employee cafeterias (a common occurrence at the Century Plaza) and on the sidewalks outside (a common occurrence at the Beverly Hilton). Maybe it was all those troublesome priests and ministers and rabbis, organized by Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), which came into being during last year’s battle for L.A.’s living-wage ordinance, and which has now expanded its emphasis to advocacy for the city’s seemingly countless low-wage workers. By mid-April, CLUE’s clericals had become particularly adept at their own latter-day version of the old lunch-counter sit-in. In a program called Java for Justice, they would have coffee and lunch in the hotel dining room and, upon completion of the meal, rise and deliver what
Reverend Dick Gillett, who heads the Episcopal Diocese’s
Ministry for Social Justice, calls "a little homily." "We know this is a bit unusual," Gillett and his fellow clerics — invariably dressed in clerical garb for the occasion — would tell the assembled diners, "but we want you to know that the people who have prepared your meals and who wait on you so efficiently and courteously want your help today. And you could help them, just by asking for the manager and telling him you’d like this hotel to sign the contract." Such homilies have been delivered at the Bel Air, the Summit Rodeo and the Century Plaza, where, Gillett recalls, "the kitchen staff came out into the dining room and stood by in acknowledgement of our presentation." Facing a future that held out small prospect for any kind of peace, the majority of the Westside hotels concluded they might as well opt for justice. On March 26, the Beverly Wilshire signed the contract, followed on March 31 by the Beverly Hilton and on April 10 by the Century Plaza. (At the Bev-Hilt, the stumbling block had apparently been the owner,
Merv Griffin, about whom this columnist had some fairly sharp things to say in an earlier piece, all of which I now repent.
Zsa Zsa Gabor and Charo were actually talk-show guests of surprising depth.) There is as yet no agreement with the Bel Air, where the old contract does not expire until May 15. And peace is by no means at hand at the Summit Rodeo, the boutique-hotel-turned-labor-battleground. For the past three years, the Summit Rodeo and its sister hotel, the Summit Bel Air (which is nonunion), have been owned by
Efrem Harkham, a leading figure in the rag trade. During those years, according to the rabbinic fact-finding report, "Management. . . has engaged in anti-union activities including harassing and firing pro-union workers, videotaping and spying on workers, and attempting to indoctrinate its workers with anti-union propaganda during mandatory meetings." One of the workers the hotel dismissed was
Stephanie Sacker, a server with 10 years’ experience who says the reason that the hotel gave for her dismissal was that she "incorrectly processed a credit card for a customer." The more plausible reason for her dismissal, she told the
Weekly, was that she had taken a leading role in building the union there. A government review of Sacker’s charges, and the other firings, is still pending before the
National Labor Relations Board.
Margarito Ramirez, a cook at the hotel’s Café Rodeo since 1979, recounts being called into the office of general manager
Stefan Nielsen. "He asked my cooperation to convince my co-workers to throw out the union," Ramirez says. "He gave me to understand that if I cooperated, he would offer me a different position in the hotel, or a raise if that’s what I wanted." Such activities, the rabbis concluded, "constitute violations of Jewish law, according to the Talmud and the Torah." (Owner Harkham, in case you haven’t figured it out, is active in Jewish community affairs.) Last Friday, a dozen Westside rabbis signed an ad in the
Beverly Hills Courier calling on Harkham to "Please sign a contract." On the same day, hotel workers at the Summit Rodeo walked off their jobs, beginning a three-day strike that forced management to close its Café Rodeo dining room and scramble to maintain guest services. Management has already been threatening to close the Café Rodeo and open a retail outlet in its place — a move that the union charges is purely retaliatory, since it will reduce the workforce from 90 to 40, and one that still must pass muster with the appropriate bodies of Beverly Hills city government. The threat of shuttering the restaurant places a de facto limit on the duration of any Summit Rodeo strike: If the Café Rodeo stays dark long enough, management may just decide to keep it dark. When asked Tuesday to comment on the various charges swirling around the hotel,
Anna Gargioni, Harkham’s assistant, said only that "We’re in the middle of high-level discussions with the union, and we’re unable to comment on any issues that may come up in that discussion."
