If you’ve strolled through the Hilton hotel in downtown Anchorage lately, and noticed that—considering it’s tourist season—the place seems a little less busy than one would expect, there’s a reason for that.

The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 878, which represents some 200 Hilton employees, announced that it had overwhelmingly voted to place their hotel under boycott on April 20, when they had a rally outside of the hotel.

HERE says it’s been negotiating with Columbia Sussex, the Kentucky-based company that owns the Hilton, since last summer, to maintain their current contract. According to Senator Bill Wielechowski, who attended the rally, Columbia Sussex has offered the workers a 10 cent an hour wage increase, but wanted the employees to pick up a significant portion of their health insurance costs, which amounts to about two weeks of a year’s pay. “It’s really a step backwards,” Wielechowski says. “It’s going to affect the lives of a thousand Alaskan families here in Anchorage, so it’s a big deal. They’re asking them to do more work for less pay, essentially. It doesn’t benefit anyone here in Alaska for an Outside company to come in and do that.” Columbia Sussex purchased the Anchorage Hilton on December 28, 2006, and while negotiations with the previous owners were reasonable, according to the labor community, Alaska AFL-CIO president Vince Beltrami says that Columbia Sussex is “widely known to be problematic when it comes to dealing with employee situations.”

Meanwhile, according to Daniel Esparza from HERE, housekeeping employees are being asked to raise the number of rooms they clean in a shift from 15 to 17, and if employees don’t comply, they’re subject to disciplinary action: warnings, suspensions, and firing. “[Columbia Sussex] is going after the ones that are probably least able to defend themselves,” Beltrami says. “The hotel employee restaurant union, they represent a lot of the lower wage earners. So the housekeepers, a lot of them are minority women—most I would say—and they’re really trying to put it to them.”

Traditionally, the three large hotels in town—the Captain Cook, the Sheraton and the Hilton—have set the industry standard when it comes to negotiating contracts with unions. The Captain Cook’s local owners, for example, signed what workers considered a fair contract with the union. But the purchase of the Hilton by Columbia Sussex has threatened that dynamic.

For its part, Columbia Sussex—in a press release sent to the Press, after several phone calls seeking comment—says that “HERE Local 878’s bargaining approach ignores today’s economic realities. Local 878 has adopted a very militant position, and has been talking about a strike, picketing and boycott.”

The press release concludes: “We hope the Union comes to realize its militant approach and inflammatory rhetoric are not productive. Hopefully, the Union will stop its grandstanding, publicity generating stunts and return to the bargaining table with a more realistic perspective consistent with the current economic realities.”

“‘Bargaining in good faith’ is bullshit,” Beltrami says. “All they have to do is show up, even if they make offers that won’t go anywhere and they know it. They say, ‘you don’t like that one? Let’s meet again in six months.’ That’s how they stall things and try to break the backs of the unions.”

So, two months in, is the boycott working? Senator Wielechowski dropped out of a speaking engagement that he’d previously agreed to, when he found out it was at the Hilton.

Beltrami points to the fact that last August, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) had its west coast Apprenticeship Olympics at the Hilton. “It was a $50,000 deal over two days,” he says. “We brought a lot of money in there; that’s a pretty good revenue stream I’m guessing—$50,000 to $100,000-plus every time they book a major conference when you add up the rental space and the rooms and the food.”

The national secretary treasurer of the Building Trades Association, who’s coming up this summer for an event, was booked at the Hilton for a lunch event, a reception, plus rooms for the out of state visitors. That’s been rebooked at the Captain Cook. Plus, Beltrami says that the boycott message has gone out to retired union pensioners, who travel a lot. “Basically our boycott says don’t spend a dime there, and tell everyone you know to do the same,” Beltrami says.

“It’s almost impossible to find numbers because the hotel definitely won’t give us numbers at all,” Esparza, of HERE, says. “But the hotel is slower than normal, definitely slower than last year.”

Esparza and other Local 878 members have been passing out fliers at the Anchorage Market and Festival downtown touting the boycott.

Still, there is no date set for the next negotiations with Columbia Sussex, according to Esparza. And if the boycott doesn’t work, Local 878 members could amp up the pressure by picketing or even striking.

“It’s a matter of fighting for working families,” Senator Wielechowski says. “They’re a union busting company; they’re trying to break the union and not pay the workers fair wages and benefits.”

bjk@anchoragepress.com