Ladies and gentleman, the captain has turned on the seat belt sign, we will now be making our descent into the Los Angeles area.” Trays go up, shoes go on, the comforting hum of climate controlled air keeps purring.

Every morning, thousands of feet in the air and thousands more away from the runway of Los Angeles International Airport, stewardesses instruct passengers to prepare for landing. As they do so, the jets coming in from the north corner of L.A. County pass over the town of Palmdale where Maria Martinez, a mother of two who works for the LAX Hilton, gets in the car for her daily commute to work-a journey of nearly 70 miles, and one that she’s made for 10 years since she was forced to move her family outside the city in order to survive on her housekeeper’s income. It takes her an hour and a half each way. By jet, the descent from Palmdale takes less than 10 minutes.

“When I started working at the Hilton,” Martinez says, “I started making $6.35 an hour. After 18 years I make $9.38 per hour. I’ve received raises of 8 and 10 cents a year.” Meanwhile, in those 18 years she says the cost of living for her family has doubled, sending them on a search for housing further and further outside the city.

The stretch of Century Blvd. that greets business travelers and tourists alike once they land and hop in exhaust spitting airport shuttles is a Vegas-like strip of major hotel chains, rental car lots, fast food joints and the occasional “Live Nude” establishment. It’s a stretch that some call the Gateway to L.A.; others call it a citywide embarrassment.

A report released in February by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE) found that the communities surrounding the airport-Lennox, Inglewood and Hawthorne-which many hotel workers call home, suffer extremely high rates of poverty and crime, with an almost nonexistent local business economy. The hotel industry along Century Blvd., on the other hand, accounts for the highest concentration of hotel rooms in L.A. County. However, the workers that keep them running receive wages and benefits far below that of their counterparts in the rest of the county.

Of the 14 major hotels on Century Blvd., not one employs union workers. The area has long been a frustration to organizers from the Local 11 chapter of Unite Here-a local hotel workers’ union-who have tried unsuccessfully to build a union movement in the area’s hotels for years.

While the low wages and harsh working conditions on Century Blvd. are nothing new, the most momentous push for change these addresses have ever seen is brewing. The LAANE report in February kicked off what workers and community leaders are calling the Campaign for A New Century that began with a petition and has led to face-to-face meetings with L.A. City Council. This week, a group of hotel workers, community organizers and religious leaders launched the next step in the aggressive campaign to unionize workers and set a new standard for the future of development in the LAX corridor.

On Wednesday, March 29, hotel workers and a Blue Ribbon Committee of concerned community leaders spoke to L.A. City Council’s Commerce Committee about working conditions on Century Blvd. at the first in a series of public hearings aimed at upgrading the LAX tourism industry and revitalizing the Century Blvd. corridor. A number of hotel employees gave testimony on their struggle with low wages, unregulated workload, and lack of affordable healthcare. At the end of the meeting, City Council members pledged to examine policy options for the city to get involved.

In their testimonies to City Council, as well as in a petition they presented to council members in March, the L.A. Campaign for a New Century (LACNC) is demanding higher wages for workers, a renewed commitment to increasing revenue in LAX hotels, and a pledge to help clean up the surrounding neighborhoods.

“The coalition is looking for a comprehensive solution that links the poverty in the hotels to the poverty in these communities,” says Danny Feingold, communications director of LAANE. “It’s about improving the quality of life, not just unionizing workers.”

Through public hearings, Feingold says, the Coalition hopes to convince the city to draw up concrete proposals for both future business development and job standards. If they succeed, the 3,500 employees of Century Blvd. hotels may win benefits long enjoyed by workers in other markets that have proved illusive in the LAX corridor (everything from wage increases to enforced shift breaks). What’s more, a success around the formidable anti-union businesses of LAX would demonstrate that organized labor is well on its way to cultivating lasting and beneficial partnerships with people in high places.

But down on the lavish lobby floors of the LAX hotels, it’s clear why this zip code has fended off the touch of organized labor. In many ways, the Gateway to L.A. is a relic of an era long-gone. Once a hub of travel thanks to the headquarters of both Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, the LAX area is now nearly hub-less, and has been without a sole revenue generator of that size since both companies left town decades ago.

“Most of those hotel rooms were built for an industry that no longer exists: the Aerospace Industry,” says Michael Collins, executive vice president of L.A. Inc., a trade association for the tourism industry.

It’s a long block, Vegas-style development with a non-existent cultural center, no real entertainment venues, an abundance of chain restaurants and a high volume of sex clubs-all resulting in a particularly bleak tourism industry that enjoys high occupancy in its hotels, but mostly in the form of one-night stays and quick check-outs from business trips and layovers. One other major source of hotel business-that of the airlines themselves whose employees regularly stay overnight in the LAX area-is less than lucrative because of the huge discounts provided in their bulk bookings.

For years, the Century Blvd. hotels have publicly discussed plans for a conference center, as a means of bringing new clientele, revamping hotel revenue and revitalizing the area. But despite the general approval among hotel owners, the conference center plan has never developed into anything more than just that: a plan.

Now the workers and community leaders behind the Campaign for a New Century have adopted the idea of building a conference center, with included support for that plan in their petition. “What we’re asking for is really what they’ve been talking about for years now,” said Danny Tabor, a founding member of LACNC, in an interview with L.A. Alternative back in February.

In fact, support for the conference center proposal seems to reflect a new way of thinking among community leaders like Tabor, who are seizing on the inability of the Century Blvd. hotels to maximize their revenue as a problem that trickles down to their employees. If the city’s tourism industry is strengthened and revenue is increased, so may wages-or so the thinking goes.
“I think that it’s a pretty good piece of logic,” says Collins, “that if…increases in profits come in a substantial way, it does create a better climate for negotiating compensation for any of the vendors, including the workers.”

Whether or not the trickle-down theory is a good one, studies have shown that the hotel industry around LAX is performing below its potential.

Century Blvd. has the largest inventory of rooms in any L.A. County lodging industry. Thanks to their proximity to LAX, the hotels benefit from a high volume of domestic and international travel. The area has the highest occupancy rate and the second highest total amount in dollars of any of the local markets. And yet, it also has the lowest-priced rooms in the county.

“Overall, it suggests to us that the industry is an important industry, but that it could become stronger and improve both in the amount of revenue it brings in, and the benefits it provides to workers through the earnings of the industry,” said Dan Flaming, president of the Los Angeles Economic Roundtable, at a community meeting last week. The Economic Roundtable, a nonprofit research group, has compared L.A.’s hotel industry to that of other major US cities and studies the LAX corridor in particular.

“At best, as it stands right now, a worker in a hotel in Los Angeles-the average worker-makes about three quarters of what they officially say it costs to live in our city.” Flaming has also studied how the LAX area workers’ wages compare to their counterparts in the rest of L.A. County. “In this area, the wages are below the county average, and the county average is already below the cost of living.”

The average hotel employee in the Century Blvd. hotels earns between $6.75 and $9, according to Clergies and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), a non-denominational group that supports the workers. Union employees doing the same job in downtown L.A. make about $11.65.

“There’s a night and day difference between wages of unionized hotels and non-unionized hotels,” says Flaming. “When a hotel is organized, it’s a living wage. If it’s not, it’s far below the living wage.”

The public hearing on March 23 in an auxiliary room of the Westminster Christian Church was abuzz with the clandestine importance that church multi-purpose rooms lend to any event. Family members saved rows of aluminum folding chairs for those standing in line for plastic plates of fruit and cookies. Microphones on the makeshift stage stood in front of the table for the night’s committee panel, giving off testy throbs of momentary feedback in between speakers. Babies wailed on shoulders at nothing in particular.

The Blue Ribbon Commission, led by Ruth Galanter, a former City Council representative for the LAX area, was gathered to hear the complaints, frustrations and suggestions of hotel workers in preparation for a report the commission will present to L.A. City Council in the coming weeks. Other panel members included Reverend Cecil Murray, Los Angeles Community College Trustee Warren Furutani, Susana Reyes of the Sierra Club, and Professor Ninez Ponce of the UCLA School of Public Health.

Row after row of audience members, most of them hotel workers and their families, fidgeted with the headsets that blared with a Spanish translation of the stage’s goings-on. Cliques of union organizers, supporters and concerned neighbors stood in back craning their necks. Every five minutes, the panel’s speakers were silenced by a rumble of a jumbo jet flying overhead, nearing its landing at LAX-a more appropriate reminder of the night’s significance couldn’t have been staged.

“Worker’s rights,” boomed Father Perry Leiker, “the rights to just, living wages, the right to safe working conditions, the right to leisure and earning enough income to put a little away toward ownership of property and to building a secure future, the right to health benefits, these are rights, not privileges.”

Father Leiker of Hawthorne’s St. Joseph Catholic Church told the audience that, as pastor to many of the hotel workers and their families, he has seen firsthand the hardships caused by low wages in the communities surrounding the airport. Leiker, along with a number of other religious leaders in the area have banded together under the nondenominational group CLUE to support the hotel workers in their struggle.

“Low wages are forcing so many parents to take a second job, leaving children at risk,” he said. “We all see the effects on children when their parents are not around to raise them.” More than just low pay, he said, the lack of any employee benefits cause innumerable problems for his parishioners who are often forced to choose between food and paying for health insurance.

When one Westminster congregation member walked through the aisles passing out pink comment slips to those who wished to speak, he was bum-rushed and ran out in seconds. One by one, workers from hotels with various addresses on Century Blvd. stood up to share their stories with the committee members, who shook their heads with sympathetic chagrin. But it was also a chance for co-workers to speak with one another, openly and without embarrassment or fear, about their hard situations and struggle to survive.

“I’d rather have medical insurance than $100,000 in the bank,” Ana Mendez, a server at the Hilton, told L.A. Alternative. Mendez said that if hotel visitors think the 20 percent gratuity the hotel charges goes to their server, they are sadly mistaken. “Because we are non-union, we are given 8 percent, but that is split between all the servers on a shift, so we make less than one percent of our tips.” To Mendez, the battle for benefits is not abstract; in fact it’s quite practical. “The goal I have, that I think is realistic, is I’d like to see all servers getting their 20 percent tip on top of their hours, plus medical.”

For some workers who testified to the commission, the lack of affordable healthcare has already become a nightmare. Maria Morataya, a housekeeper for the Sheraton, opted out of the $300 a month, company-offered insurance. She makes $8.22 an hour and says she can’t afford it. But that decision became far more costly earlier this year when her daughter broke her hand and, after not receiving immediate medical attention, contracted an infection. Weeks went by before they could get an appointment, and when she was finally admitted to the hospital the bill came in at $37,000, an amount that Morataya says is unimaginable to her.

Tom Johnstone, the assistant superintendent of Lennox Schools, says he and other officials in his district have been forced by the hotel industry’s shortcomings to play a role they are unprepared for: health officials. In the absence of any employer provided healthcare, many of the students at Lennox schools come to class so ill they are sent to the infirmary, one that has ballooned into a free clinic of sorts. “The local tourism industry has cast the responsibilities on to the Lennox school district and to the taxpayers,” Johnstone told the commission. Like the Lennox school district, hospitals in L.A. carry a far heavier burden when uninsured patients-which many hotel employees say they are-end up in the emergency rooms.

One Hilton housekeeper had trouble keeping her voice calm when she stepped to the microphone. She told the crowd that Hilton workers are required by hotel managers to attend group meetings aimed at intimidating those who are believed to be working for, or sympathetic to, unionization. According to her, the Hilton has hired an outside consultant to provide anti-union intervention services by coaching managers in union avoidance strategies and dealing directly with workers. “Instead of spending the money for Cruz and Associates,” she said, “they should give their workers a better wage.” Another housekeeper said that managers have told them that, “when we started working there we filled out a contract. That’s a lie,” she said. “We filled out an application.”

Cruz and Associates Labor Relations Counseling, with which Hilton signed a $166,000 contract, according to workers, calls itself a specialist in union avoidance. “Cruz and Associates has the resources, skills and experience to produce winning results in the face of virtually any union challenge,” says the company’s website.

As reported last week in the Los Angeles Times, union activity has been a particularly sharp thorn in Hilton management’s side. Grant Coonley, who manages the Hilton, recently circulated a memo concerning Unite Here saying, “I am annoyed at their tactics. They try to ruin or hurt a business until it gives in to force employees to pay dues.”

Union avoidance has been an effective policy at many of the hotels throughout the LAX corridor for years. The aversion to organized labor and the constant thwarting of labor politics by strong business forces is a firm part of Los Angeles history, and a tough trait to shed. While many sectors of the city’s work force remain union free, perhaps few markets have been as tough to penetrate as LAX suites.

For years, the Wyndham Hotel was the only unionized hotel along Century Blvd. But in 2000 the hotel was sold, closed for renovations, and the new owner laid-off over 200 workers from shuttle drivers to housekeepers. When the hotel reopened as the Radisson LAX in 2001, the new owner did not honor previous union contracts or give priority in hiring to past Wyndham employees. After several months of pressure by community leaders, including clergy and their congregants mobilized by CLUE, the Radisson eventually rehired a number of previous employees. In addition, Radisson LAX management signed a Neutrality Agreement with representatives of Unite Here, pledging not to intervene or interfere as the workers exercised their legal right to decide if they wished to be part of a union.

According to CLUE, management of the Radisson has persistently violated this agreement since early 2005. Workers have been subjected to illegal “captive audience” meetings, and worker leaders have been suspended for participation in union organizing. From April through October 2005, the Radisson fired eight worker leaders. In July, a federal arbitrator reviewing claims of Unfair Labor Practices by the union and counterclaims by the hotel’s management issued a preliminary ruling, which essentially validated the union’s position in this dispute, but stopped short of applying any sanctions.

If regulating the hotel industry has been nearly impossible, negotiating with hotel owners has been just as tough, and it’s not been a matter of butting heads as much as a one-sided conversation, and silence. At the Westminster Church public hearing, representatives of the hotel industry were conspicuously absent from the proceedings, underlying one of the major obstacles of the Campaign for a New Century. Even if most of the LAX hotels weren’t adamantly opposed to union activity as company policy (they are), there is no one representative of the industry with whom to begin negotiations.

Michael Collins put the problem another way: “I don’t think that the hotels would operate necessarily uniformly because they all have different points of view, they all have different owners, they all have different goals. And one property may see this situation very differently than another.”

Grant Coonley, who manages the LAX Hilton and represents Gateway to L.A., a business improvement district, was invited to participate in the Commission hearing by LACNC. The invitation was declined. Although in many ways Gateway to L.A. represents the interests of hotel owners in terms of future development, the group says it does not consider itself a spokesperson for the tourism industry in the face of labor disputes. No one does, it turns out.

“There could be an alliance of hotels that could work together to represent a collective point of view that would in turn deal with organized labor, in other words create a formal coalition, but that hasn’t happened,” says Collins. “In absence of that, each hotel will have to come up with its own strategy and its own goals, but I think that issue is going to be a really big one in the weeks to come.”

Even as the Campaign for a New Century reaches an increasing audience with its message, there is an obvious snagging point: Hotel management-even high-ups like Coonley-are not necessarily in the position to negotiate decisions that affect revenue, guaranteeing that hotel owners themselves will have to get involved at some point. The term “reluctant” does not begin to describe the unwillingness of corporate VPs in attending organized labor’s public hearings.

However, LACNC’s newest audience, City Council, may prove a more effective one. Those behind the campaign hope that the process that began last Wednesday with the testimony before the council will end in the city’s intervention into labor disputes, in one way or another. What is different this time around is that elected officials have chosen to get involved at all. Even before taking office, Mayor Villaraigosa helped negotiate the battle between hotel workers and their employers elsewhere in the city. More than ever before, L.A. City Council members have strong ties to organized labor, even as they insist, as Councilman Bill Rosendahl has, that they remain neutral brokers.

“Is any of this new?” asks Collins. “I think what is new…is that we’re looking at the first time that there’s an alignment of interests in the city to say, ‘Well wait a minute, is this the highest and best that we can expect from this massive assembly of hotel rooms, in an industry that is our second largest?’ I think that’s what it takes-it takes elected leadership to say ‘Stop.’”

The proposed-but neglected-idea of a conference center would require strong city support and a huge financial investment. More immediately, workers are looking for someone in city government to acknowledge their struggle and begin looking into formalizing job standards. And if it ever had a chance, the chance is now.

Maria Martinez says now is the time for a different reason. She’s sick and tired, almost literally. Standing outside the church multi-purpose room where the Blue Ribbon Commission is wrapping up its hearing, she shows where her body hurts from her job. She massages her wrists, points to her back, and shrugs her shoulders. In a hushed tone Martinez recounts her day-to-day routine, through a translator whose voice seems as tired as hers.

“I’m very proud of the work that I do, but the work load that they force me to do is impossible to make,” she says.

“I’m a housekeeper and I clean 16 rooms a day. Every year the hotel adds more amenities into those rooms. Every bed has three sheets and nine pillows. Some of those rooms have double beds. Those beds are very comfortable for the guests, but they’re very heavy for the housekeepers,” says Martinez.

In the 18 years she’s been cleaning rooms at the Hilton, she says she’s seen many people try to organize and lose their jobs. In 1998, she says, a different union tried to organize the Hilton’s employees and failed. Despite it all, Martinez says, people are pushing harder now than ever.

“We are standing up now, because we are tired of seeing injustice and a lack of respect.”

Study Exposes The Dangers of Hotel Housekeeping - Read