On February 2, Gina Tubman and Lucy Dudek, both servers at the Sheraton Hotel downtown and members of the local hotel workers union, Unite Here Local 878, were outside the Fifth Avenue entrance of the hotel handing out fliers to people entering and leaving the hotel, notifying them that the union had put the hotel under boycott. The boycott is in place at the Hilton hotel as well, where workers haven’t been able to reach agreement with the hotel’s management on an acceptable contract. At the Sheraton, the boycott is in place because the operator, Dallas-based Remington Hotels, stripped the workers of their union health care plan and offered them a higher priced plan with a higher deductible.

While Tubman and Dudek were passing out their fliers notifying potential patrons of the boycott on the Sheraton, bellman Troy Prichacharn and another worker (who’s chosen not to speak to the press) were doing the same on the Sixth Avenue side of the building. After about a half-hour, according to the union members, they were approached by the human resources manager of the hotel and asked to leave. Eventually the front desk manager and the general manager of the Sheraton, Denis Artiles, confronted the union members as well, telling them to leave. (Artiles did not respond to a request to comment for this story.)

The next day the four workers were suspended from their jobs. “They never told us how many days for the suspension, there were no written papers,” according to Dudek. Then, on February 17, the four workers said they were called into the general manager’s office and fired for their actions two weeks earlier. The union cites National Labor Relations Board case law saying union employees have the right to be in non-work areas of their workplace to communicate with the employer’s customers during a labor dispute, and that these non-work areas include the doors leading into the employer’s business. The four workers and Unite Here have filed complaints with the NLRB, but don’t expect to get resolution on the terminations in the near future.

“This is a power play by [Remington],” Unite Here’s Jessica Lawson says. “They know they’re completely out of control with this, but I think they’re doing this on purpose because they know the NLRB process takes so long, and the only penalty really is to put them back to work, and maybe do some back pay.” The workers insist they want their jobs back, and once the NLRB process is complete, they expect to be back working at the Sheraton.

Meanwhile, the Sheraton is losing business due to the boycott. In a February 19 letter from the State of Alaska’s Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s procurement officer, posted at local activist Mel Green’s henkimaa.com blog, the DOLWD cancelled the Governor’s Safety Conference, which was reserved for March 23 to 25 at the Sheraton. In the letter, the procurement officer notes they’d sent a letter to Artiles, the hotel’s general manager, to address concerns about the boycott, but even after leaving telephone messages, the state hadn’t heard back from Artiles.

For now, the Unite Here workers say there’s no talk of a walkout or strike at the Sheraton.

“We’re going to fight until we outlast them,” Prichacharn says.

bjk@anchoragepress.com