US and Japanese workers solidarity across the Pacific

by Fred Gaboury

This article was reprinted from the February 22, 1997 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

LOS ANGELES - Demonstrators on both sides of the Pacific protested the anti-union activity of the New Otani Hotel in Los Angeles last week as Local 11 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union stepped up its campaign to win union recognition for the hotel's 300 employees.

On Feb. 17 unionists in Tokyo picketed the headquarters of Kajima Corporation, a giant construction company that is the largest stockholder in the Los Angeles hotel. Two days later AFL-CIO President John Sweeney joined 2,000 trade unionists and their supporters in a demonstration at the 436-room hotel in Los Angeles' "Little Tokyo."

The L.A. demonstration came on the third day of the annual mid-winter meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council. These meetings, held at a posh hotel in Bal Harbour, Fla., for the previous 71 years, made meetings of the council the subject of ridicule by friend and foe alike.

But this year things were different - and indicative of the changes that have taken place in the AFL-CIO since Sweeney led a team of Linda Chavez-Thompson and Richard Trumka into the federation's leadership in the fall of 1995. The 54- member council now meets in cities where major class battles are underway as part of the campaign to make the AFL-CIO relevant to working families, be they union families or not.

Sweeney, who has called the Otani campaign one of the nation's most important organizing campaigns involving a Japanese company, told protesters, "We're going to do everything in our power to make the fight with the New Otani Hotel a national, and yes, an international fight."

Maria Elena Durazo, president of HERE Local 11, said "The size of the crowd is proof that the labor movement of Los Angeles will stand with those who have the courage to fight for their rights." Durazo is a vice-president of the L.A. Labor Federation and a member of the executive board of her international union.

The campaign to bring union protections and conditions to the cooks, housekeepers and waiters began in 1993 when Local 11 was approached by Otani employees complaining about deteriorating working conditions; the cost of medical insurance up tenfold, wages that were inadequate to pay for basic necessities; widespread favoritism and unfair treatment.

In addition, Otani does not provide pensions or recognize seniority. Women workers are subject to harsh treatment, and minorities complain that they are subject to abuse and insult from managers. When workers complain, they are threatened with a stack of applications and the warning that "there are plenty of people who would like to work here."

When Local 11 moved into the picture, management struck back with a vengeance, firing three women for union activity in February 1985. Ana Alvarado, a housekeeper with 16 years seniority and a single parent with three young children, was one of them. "They thought they could make an example of us," she told the World.

Anna, now working for $7.26 an hour preparing meals for airline passengers, said she had been given a promotion that made her responsible for preparing the suites for management personnel who came from Japan to check up on things. Although the NLRB has won a court decision that the discharge of Alvarado and the two others was illegal, the hotel has entered an appeal. "It may take years to get our back wages and our jobs back," she said.

Topping the agenda at this year's meeting was the challenge posed in the council's "Organizing for change, changing to organize," program meant to transform the AFL-CIO and its affiliates into what Sweeney calls a "lean, mean fighting machine."

Pointing to the fact that although AFL-CIO affiliates had gained some 12,000 members in 1996, Sweeney warned that the relative strength of the labor movement had continued to decline. "The problem with our political program is that there are far too few union members in the United States," he said during a press conference. "Our problem is that America needs a raise, and one of the most effective solutions is a bigger and stronger labor movement, one capable of acting as a counterweight to the corporate forces now dominating our economy, a labor movement strong enough to speak out forcefully for working families in the political area."

Today unions represent about 15 percent of the work force, the lowest level since 1935, a year before the founding of the CIO and down from some 24 percent as recently as 1981. Part of the decline can be attributed to plant closings, globalization, downsizing and privatization which currently cost the AFL-CIO roughly 300,000 members a year. Add to that the growth of the work force, and unions would have approximately 400,000 new members annually to maintain their relative strength.

But Richard Bensinger, AFL-CIO director for organizing, says the labor movement must accept some of the blame. "Faced with a changing economy and a growing anti-union movement, the labor movement collectively chose the shortsighted strategy of trying to protect current contracts of members instead of organizing new members."

Sweeney said the AFL-CIO would commit 30 percent of this year's operating budget to organizing, and challenged local and international unions to meet that level by the year 2000. He said that more than $2 million would be spent on two efforts - one a campaign to organize construction workers in Las Vegas, and a second to organize 20,000 strawberry workers in California.