Union Supporters Target Film Market

By Teresa Rochester

A raucous demonstration blocked streets and snarled traffic at the height of rush hour Thursday night as union organizers and their supporters protested the treatment of workers at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel during the American Film Market Association's weeklong convention.

For ten years, the AFMA has used the luxury hotel, which is currently embroiled in a bitter unionizing drive, as its headquarters for its convention, which brings thousands of movie industry distributors and buyers to town.

About 200 demonstrators - some wrapped in plastic trash bags to fend off the biting cold - turned out to denounce the hotel's alleged practice of cutting hours, scaling back the amount of gratuities attached to service charges and changing work assignments for workers during the convention.

"When AFMA disrespects the people who serve them, then our whole Santa Monica community is disrespected," Susan Conrad of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica told the crowd of protestors.

"I'm here because it's time for Loews and the AFMA to recognize that they are going to be held accountable for the way that workers are being treated in these hotels."

While no arrests were made Thursday night, demonstrators encountered irate motorists and an equally boisterous, though much smaller, counter protest by Loews workers who oppose the unionizing effort.

Most American Film Market attendees walked briskly past demonstrators, while others stood in their hotel rooms or on the sidewalk watching protestors stage a skit parodying wealthy bosses and poor workers, according to union officials. None would comment on the demonstration.

AFMA officials distanced themselves from the labor strife earlier in the day. A spokeswoman for the event said the AFMA needed to be left out of the battle.

Organizers for the Hotel Employee and Restaurant Employee Local 814 and Local 11 met with AFMA officials in January. They said they asked the organization to support the workers and oppose alleged "union busting" techniques employed by the hotel's management.

AFMA officials also were asked to support several demands made on Loews management. The demands called for the hotel to "ensure that workers suffer no loss of income. Provide workers with adequate training and transfer opportunities. Supply adequate staffing for all departments," according to a letter distributed by the union.

The demands also stated that management should "allow room service and banquet workers to review the distribution of tips, service charges and gratuities and guarantee that all AFMA tips, gratuities and service charges go directly to workers."

In a letter dated Feb. 16, 2001, Jean M. Prewitt, president of the AFMA, wrote "we are assured that Loews Hotel management is very aware of the ways in which the AFM may affect their employees and they have in place procedures to accommodate both the staff and the requirements for a successful AFM.

"We also have confirmed that any voluntary gratuities paid by AFMA at the end of the market will continue to be distributed to all employees in accordance with our instruction," the letter continued.

A contingent of demonstrators led by former City Councilman Paul Rosenstein attempted to deliver the demands that were stenciled on a large cardboard clapboard surround by supporters' signatures to AFMA officials at the entrance to the association's awards ceremony in the north Pier parking lot.

They were told by security that no one with the AFMA was present to take the petition.

Thursday's protest, the first in two months, was mostly peaceful. Tempers flared at the beginning of the march as protestors attempted to cross Appian Way at Pico Boulevard.

Angry motorists shouted at marchers, while the drivers of a white stretch limousine and a white Chrysler LaBaron convertible drove their vehicles through the crowd, as union organizers called for them to stop to let the marchers through.

Delmy Falla, a former Fairmont Miramar Hotel employee who now works fulltime with the union, stood in front of the Chrysler LaBaron yelling at the woman behind the wheel to wait as marchers passed. The driver continued to move forward lifting Falla onto the hood of the car. Union officials said they would file a police report.

"I said stop the people are passing, but she said she didn't care," said Falla.

In front of the hotel, demonstrators encountered an equally spirited group of Loews employees waving anti-union placards and chanting.

"We don't want a union," said Jose Manuel. "We are the real workers of the hotel. They are nobodies. We don't want a union."

The public battle to unionize the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel began last May, following the certification of the Fairmont Miramar Hotel as the City's only union hotel. (The Pacific Shore Hotel, which is owned by the City, has since joined the union ranks after the City Council placed an unprecedented clause in the lease requiring the new operators to remain neutral in any union organizing effort.)

At the heart of the battle between HERE Local 814 and hotel management is the type of election that should be held to determine whether Loews will become the City's third unionized hotel.

Hotel management wants a secret ballot election monitored by the National Labor Relations Board. Union officials are calling for a card check election similar to the one held at Pacific Shore last November. A card check election would require hotel management to remain neutral and guarantee that the results cannot be appealed to the NLRB.

The bitter fight received national attention in August when members of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in town for the Democratic National Convention, moved their headquarters out of Loews to the Miramar in response to the labor dispute. The union garnered support from a bevy of Democratic heavy weights.