UNITE HERE Local 11 has called for a boycott of the LAX Hotel, and among the early supporters are the California Teachers Association and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.
The workers are seeking the right to organize with the union of their choice, and accuse the hotel of retaliation, harassment and intimidation against those who exercise their rights.
Among the issues the workers say they face are low wages, a high cost of benefits and poor working conditions which sometimes force housekeepers to work all day long without a break.
“We actually witnessed it (the bad treatment) first hand,” said Bonnie Shatun, a Burbank second grade teacher and CTA board member who attended the press conference. “At our June state council meeting, we had invited hotel workers to speak to the teachers about the difficulties they face, and we know for fact at least one of the workers was later called in the manager’s office and given a letter of reprimand.”
Shatun said at a meeting the next day at Westin Hotel, security would not even allow the workers to meet with the teachers and called police on them.
The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles agreed to the tune of $60,000—the down payment the group forfeited because they pulled an upcoming conference from the hotel.
Banks knows intimately what treatment Shatun is talking about because for one-and-half years, she was the young African-American woman who worked as a front desk agent at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel. She said it was so hard to make ends meet based on her salary that she, a single woman, was forced to move back home with her mother.
“My health insurance was $80 a month. I could barley afford my bills, and I didn’t have any children. I was so stressed out,” said Banks, who still remembers co-workers lamenting to her about the lack of time spent with their children because they had to work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet. She also remembers working 12 consecutive days and being told that she could quit if she did not like it.
Banks quit working at the hotel and now works as a community organizer with the Coalition for a Better Inglewood but came back to the boycott rally to support friends and former co-workers.
In addition to calling for a boycott of the LAX Hilton, UNITE HERE is also negotiating with unionized hotels to hire more African Americans.
“African Americans often ask why I’m involved, because this only benefits immigrants,” said Banks. “But we need to open our eyes, because the real problem is poverty. And poverty for one is poverty for all. We (blacks) were pushed out of the (hotel) jobs and immigrants (including Haitians) were brought in to be further exploited. But we all live together, and we all experience the poverty of the working poor,” Banks pointed out.
For over 20 years, Isabel “Segunda” Brentner has worked at the LAX Hilton, keeping her focus on her family and her job. “My priorities [were] to help my family,” says Brentner, who, along with raising her own children, cared for both her father and grandmother when they were ill. 
Enedina Alvarez, a 54-year-old single parent, says she must be both mother and father to her teenage children. Yet, with two jobs, she has barely enough money to house, feed and clothe them—and precious little time to spend with them. Although she receives health insurance through her job, she cannot afford to insure her children. Alvarez says, “I pray to God that my kids do not get sick because I cannot pay the medical bills.” 
Nearly all hotel housekeepers are women. The majority are women of color and immigrants.
