Hotel Workers Oust Union in Narrow Vote

Workers at Santa Monica’s Miramar Sheraton Hotel have voted 120 to 108 to oust the labor organization that has served for decades as their bargaining representative, Local 814 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union.

But Local 814 won’t be leaving the hotel--the only unionized hotel in Santa Monica--any time soon. The local will stay in place at least until the National Labor Relations Board has resolved an array of unfair-labor practice charges and election objections that union leaders made against hotel operators. The process could take years.

The NLRB announced its final vote count for the union decertification election on Monday, after counting eight ballots that had been challenged. Of those eight ballots, two supported retaining the union while six favored ousting Local 814.

Local 814, however, claims that the hotel’s managers manipulated the October decertification election and illegally fought the union by, among other things, threatening to fire union supporters, assigning security guards to spy on workers who are union leaders and awarding pay raises to two workers who led the anti-union drive.

Joseph Herman, a lawyer representing the hotel, countered that it is the union, not management, that is trying to intimidate workers. He called the decertification vote “a victory for employees.” The hotel’s employees, Herman said, “have pretty clearly indicated they want to be free of the union.”