D.C. Hotel Workers Ratify 3-Year Pact, End Strike Threat

3,500 Employees Keep Health Benefits

John A. Boardman said the contract is a "total victory" for the union. (Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)

Workers from the District's major hotels yesterday overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract, ending a five-month struggle that threatened a strike during the presidential inauguration.

The contract gives 3,500 hotel workers raises over three years and guarantees that they will not pay health insurance premiums. The 14 hotels involved in the negotiations backed off from earlier demands that newly hired employees pay part of their premiums, which would have created a two-tier health care system strongly opposed by the union.

The major victory for hotels was a three-year contract, rather than the two-year deal sought by the union, which wanted to bargain for the next hotel contracts in three major cities at the same time. The union also backed off from requests for more pay for new trainees, one more paid vacation day and one more personal day.

Both sides said they were satisfied with the contract. "There is clearly not a winner in this. I think there also was no loser in this," said Peter Chatilovicz, a lawyer for the Hotel Association of Washington. "The best labor negotiations result where nobody is completely happy and nobody is completely unhappy," he said.

"This is an absolute, total victory for the [union] members in the hotels," said John A. Boardman, executive secretary-treasurer of Unite Here Local 25 .

About 98 percent of the members voting favored the contract, the union said.

The two sides had struggled to reach a deal since September, when the workers' previous contract expired. Local 25 said last week that if an agreement was not reached by Saturday, the union might strike during the inauguration as thousands of visitors came to Washington.

The wages of most workers, which now start at $13 an hour, will increase by 50 cents an hour in the first year, and 40 cents an hour in the following two years. Wait staff and other employees who receive tips are paid $6.50 an hour and will receive half the pay increase.

Union officials said they were particularly pleased with the agreement on the health insurance premiums, because they feared that a two-tier system would create poor employee morale among workers, as they said has happened in other industries.

Some experts agree. Such a system "causes tremendous divisiveness between the new workers and the old workers," said Charles B. Craver, labor law professor at George Washington University. The two-tier system was part of the reason a dispute between California grocery stores and their employees lasted five months. The workers finally agreed to a contract that included the two-tier system in February.

"Our members felt it was not fair to have someone just because they were a new worker not to afford health care," Boardman said. "And our members are astute enough to recognize that if you introduce co-pays in one group, it will show up in their column next time."

The contract also allows the union more access to the hotels and its workers. A new "leadership committee" will replace shop stewards. There will be more leadership committee members than there were shop stewards to represent the union at the hotels.

The contract also requires managers to attend grievance meetings, in an effort to resolve grievances more quickly rather than wait for an arbitration hearing. And hotels agreed to schedule eight-hour workdays instead of short shifts that workers say do not pay well enough.

The union thinks the impending inauguration was a major bargaining chip in its effort to complete the contract. "They were very lucky," Craver said. "It's like having a baseball strike just before the World Series. Timing is very critical in negotiations. Here, the timing was perfect."