Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 17 is adding another downtown hotel to its hit list for union-busting tactics.

This time, the target is the Grand Hotel Minneapolis, which calls itself 'Minneapolis' only premiere luxury hotel.' Hotel president and CEO Jeffrey J. Wirth has stonewalled at the bargaining table for two years, the union says, and continues to trot out a contract proposal that workers already have rejected.

'They say they're a four-star hotel,' said Local 17 organizer Uriel Perez, 'but they don't want to pay four-star wages.' Though starting wages are comparatively high, he said, wages for experienced employees quickly fall behind other downtown hotels.

Wage inequalities abound among hotel employees, Perez said, in part because Wirth has begun imposing his own working conditions, including granting wage increases totally at the discretion of managers.

'There are different rates of pay in the same department,' Perez said. 'They're making their own deals with workers.'

Putting on the pressure
Local 17 already is using behind-the-scenes tactics to build pressure on Wirth, Perez said, including spreading the word to NBA teams that are regular guests and contacting city inspectors about a variety of potential health, license and code violations.

In response, Wirth has sent a letter of his own, implying that employees are interested in decertifying the union.

So Local 17 is ready to take its campaign public in a more visible way, with a demonstration Jan. 17. It will be held at 11 a.m. in front of the Grand Hotel Minneapolis, 15 2nd Ave. South.

The Grand Hotel operates in the former Minneapolis Athletic Club. The property has been a union hotel for 70 years and currently employs about 45 workers, Perez said.

Longtime Twin Cities civil rights activist Nellie Stone Johnson worked as an elevator operator at the club, said Local 17 negotiator Nancy Goldman, and was one of the original organizers.

Wirth bought the property in 1998, and the transition initially went smoothly, Goldman said. 'He kept running it as it was. We rebargained a couple of tiny issues and signed off on it.'

Even though Wirth laid off workers in November 1999 - when he closed the property for complete renovation - negotiations on a new contract began the next February, Goldman said. When the building reopened in July 2000 as the Grand Hotel, Wirth did rehire workers who wanted to return, she said.

Situation deteriorates
Since then, however, Wirth has refused to budge in negotiating a contract to replace the one that expired in June 2000, Goldman said. 'Basically, he has put one offer on the table and never moved off of it.' Workers rejected that offer unanimously in March 2001, but nothing has changed, she said. 'His original offer is his one and only and final offer.'

Perez said six meetings with a mediator also have been fruitless.

From the Jan. 16, 2002, issue of The Union Advocate newspaper. Used by permission. The Union Advocate is the official publication of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@mtn.org