Union-Busting Hotel Ordered to Rehire Fired Workers, Return to Bargaining

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AFL-CIO News Blog

by Seth Michaels

Last week in Hawaii, a federal judge ordered the Pacific Beach Hotel to rehire at least seven workers fired during contract negotiations. The illegal firings were part of 15 findings of unfair labor practices by the hotel. Hotel management’s behavior here is another sign that we need to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, to restore the freedom to bargain to all workers.

Pacific Beach workers voted more than four years ago to form a union with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 142, but hotel management used the all-too-common tactics of delay and worker intimidation, in the process denying employees the freedom to bargain for a contract. The findings of abuses by hotel management by the federal court include interrogation of employees about union support, threats of job loss or punishments for union support and targeting of contract negotiators for firing.

In January 2007, the HTH Corp., which owns the Pacific Beach Hotel, canceled a contract with its management company, hired a new management company and, in the process, laid off all of its more than 300 workers, requiring them to re-apply for employment with the new management company. Many workers, including at least seven who were active in the union’s fight for a fair contract, were left out of a job.


Pacific Beach Hotel workers won a major victory last week in their four-year fight for a contract.

According to the Honolulu Advertiser, Judge James Kennedy ruled that hotel management participated in

a scheme to disguise its decision to deprive the employees of union representation and to escape its obligation to collectively bargain in good faith….

There is no debate that engaged in bad-faith bargaining from the outset, then entered into a scheme whereby it could “wash” the union’s certification from itself and behave as if the employees never had selected the union as their bargaining representative.


Read more: http://blog.aflcio.org/2009/10/05/union-busting-hotel-ordered-to-rehire-fired-workers-return-to-bargaining/

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In Hawaii one of every four workers belong to a union btw.

[msongs]

1. judge to HTH corp - "book 'em Danno" lol

[Vidar]

2. Good to hear.

[intheflow]

3. One quarter of the Hawaiian workforce is unionized?!

:wow:

[billh58]

4. Yep, and that

number is way down from what it was just 5-10 short years ago before most of the sugar mills shut down.