On Friday afternoon, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders joined striking hotel workers in downtown Los Angeles to demand the Hotel Figueroa, and hotels across Southern California, provide better pay and working conditions.
“The message from today is we are sick and tired of the greed from corporate America,” said Sanders. “Workers deserve a decent life and this union deserves a decent contract.”
The rally on April 5 was organized by labor union Unite Here Local 11, which is leading the largest hotel worker strike in modern U.S. history. So far the union has reached agreements with 34 Southern California hotels guaranteeing thousands of workers an immediate $5 an hour wage bump and $10 an hour increase over time.
Unionized workers at the Hotel Figueroa, however, are among those employed at 24 hotels that have yet to reach an agreement during the eight month labor dispute.
“I thank Unite Here for their extraordinary organizing efforts and I appreciate the hotels willing to sit down and negotiate a fair contract,” said Sanders. “Today what we are saying to Hotel Figueroa and the other hotels is ‘you’re going to do the same thing.’”
In order to sustain the labor action, workers have been walking out in waves since the strike began last summer. Workers at the Figueroa hotel have carried out five strikes and allege someone fired ball pellets at them, apparently using an air rifle, while they peacefully picketed outside the hotel in January.
“On many occasions during our pickets we’ve been attacked,” said Noelia Gonzalez, a housekeeper at Hotel Figueroa. “I’m very frustrated that my coworkers experienced violence while fighting for their rights and their benefits.”
The Hotel Figueroa is owned by private equity firm BentallGreenOak (BGO). A spokesperson for the group did not comment on the ongoing labor negotiations but said, “Our service philosophy does not condone any form of violence, and we completely reject any association to these acts.”
According to the union, 78% of the hotels that have yet to settle with workers are owned or operated by private equity firms.
“Do you know who refuses to sign? Hotels owned by private equity,” said Unite Here Local 11 Co-President Ada Briceño.
“While these private equity firms and bosses have been making billions, workers have been living in poverty,” she said. “This is corporate greed at its worst.”
Sanders also took swings at private equity, channeling his anger at the Blackstone Group, which is America’s wealthiest private equity firm and the owner of several hotels that have yet to settle with striking workers.
“The CEO of Blackstone, last year, one person earned more money than all of the workers in L.A. on strike are asking for,” said Sanders. “Fifteen thousand workers are asking for a pay raise and that will be less than that guy made in one year.”
Unite Here organizers and members also expressed their anger with recent layoffs faced by the hotel’s restaurant workers, who were employed by a contracted food operator called Noble 33.
After these workers announced their intent to unionize in February, Noble 33 closed the hotels’ five restaurants and laid off 100 workers.
Noble 33 contends that it had to fire the workers over the organizing effort, per its contract with the hotel — a claim both the hotel and Unite Here Local 11 dispute. BGO then hired a new contractor, which reopened the restaurants days later, but many former workers were not hired back.
“Once contact information for the affected employees was provided by the previous operator, job offers were extended to 36 of the previously terminated employees,” said a spokesperson for BGO in a written statement. “In accordance with the Los Angeles Hotel Worker Protection Ordinance. Today, almost all the non-managerial positions providing food and beverage service at Hotel Figueroa are staffed by former employees who have been re-hired, with wage increases and new benefits packages.”
Earlier this week a laid-off cook, Maria Ibarra, filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the failure to rehire former restaurant staff members violated the Los Angeles’ Hotel Worker Retention Ordinance.
“We service workers are not disposable,” said Ibarra in a statement. “We’re not something to be tossed aside when we’re no longer convenient.”
Gonzalez, the housekeeper, expressed her anger with how hotel management handled the situation during Friday’s rally.
“They put them out on the street and many of them are still looking for work,” she said. “The indifference of BGO proves that they don’t respect or value us as workers. The hotel and company would not exist without our hard work and effort — that’s why we deserve what we are fighting for.”