Hotels, Union Agree Only to Talk Again Next Week

"This is all about politics," said Kenneth Hodge, 49, as he helped five of his co-workers move tables and chairs to set up a banquet dinner in a ballroom at the Wardman Park. He has worked at the hotel for seven years and lives in Capitol Heights. "It's a political battle for them," Hodge said of the unions and hotels.

His co-worker Ben Long, 36, added: "And we're in the middle of the sandwich." Long thinks the workers are caught between the New York negotiators the union has brought in to advise Local 25 officials and the lawyers for the hotel.

Another worker, William Hale, 37, said: "It's a shame we're getting caught up in it. We're the ones who make it happen. We turn this room from looking like a schoolroom into a whole, sit-down dinner in 30 minutes."

Long, who has worked at the hotel for 11 years and lives in Silver Spring, said he believes the hotel is making a lot of money and doesn't understand why he can't get a raise.

Hale said, "We're just asking for a few more dollars to live in this economy." He has worked at the hotel for five years and lives in Palmer Park.

Hale and several other workers said they were frustrated by the union's effort to coordinate actions with San Francisco and Los Angeles and to insist that the three contracts expire the same year. The length of the contract appears to be one of the toughest issues for the two sides to resolve. "I can't do anything for San Francisco and Los Angeles," Hale said. "All I know is here, D.C."

The Wardman Park hotel has about 1,100 employees. Of those, about 130 are managers and executives; the rest are union employees who work as housekeepers, front desk clerks, bellmen, cooks and dishwashers. The workers speak at least 23 different languages and come from 44 different countries, including such places as Vietnam, Egypt, Cuba, Romania, Senegal, China, India, Nigeria, Colombia, Ecuador and Haiti.

More than half of the workers have been at the hotel for 10 years or more. Forty-four hourly-paid workers have worked at the hotel, which was originally built in the 1920s, for 30 years or more. The hotel's turnover rate last year was 6 percent -- far lower than the hotel industry's average of 30 percent.

"People stay here because they get comfortable," said Ed Rudzinski, general manager of the hotel. "They spend a lot of time together. They become like family because they rely on each other to make the hotel run.

"The bellman can't take people to their room if the housekeeper hasn't cleaned it and let the front desk know," he said. "It takes relying on each other."

The hotel already has lost two groups reluctant to cross any potential picket line. One, a civil servant group out of New York was supposed to take 900 rooms this week. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled a 250-person sit-down lunch for Wednesday it had planned at the hotel, according to hotel officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing negotiations.

"Whether you're with management or with the union, we need our customers; they're the ones who put paychecks in everybody's pockets," said John Huppman, director of the hotel's food and beverage divisions.

In the hotel's basement laundry room, where dryers and washers whirled and steam from irons hung in the air, four women who are considered the elders of that division stepped into a small office and said they were not eager to see a strike happen. But they said they want to get more respect from managers, be better-paid and keep their good benefits. They say they have been at the hotel a total of 106 years and often work six to seven days a week, up to 13 hours -- if needed.

"We work hard in here," said Jean Williams, 61, who has worked in the hotel's laundry for 37 years and lives in Northwest Washington.

Her co-worker Margarita Flecha, a 53-year-old who is from Puerto Rico and has worked at the hotel for 24 years, said: "They don't want to give us a little bit of help. We don't ask for millions of dollars."

None of the women has ever had to go on strike in their decades of work. Williams said she remembers in the late 1980s when union negotiations went "down to the wire." But one minute after the midnight deadline, Williams said, they got a call from the union leader saying it had been settled. This time, she's not sure how it will go, but she said her house is paid for and she's ready.

"If we can't get what we're asking for, and what we work for and deserve, and if going on strike is the only way we can get it, then we'll go for it," Williams said.