For months, the Figueroa Hotel in downtown Los Angeles has been embroiled in a labor dispute over restaurant staff who were fired after attempting to unionize.
On Wednesday, the union representing the workers announced it had reached a tentative agreement that requires the hotel to take over operations of a cafeteria, bar and kitchen for staff from a contractor and rehire some of the laid-off employees.
The deal is part of a broader agreement between the hotel and the Unite Here Local 11 union, which covers about 60 housekeepers, receptionists and engineers, said Unite Here Local 11 spokeswoman Maria Hernandez. If approved by the workers, the agreement would end the intermittent strikes that have plagued the hotel for more than a year.
Under the agreement, non-tipped workers would receive higher wages, including an immediate $5-an-hour pay increase, as well as other benefits.
For more than a year, Unite Here Local 11 has led a strike that initially affected about 60 hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties, where contracts covering more than 15,000 workers expired in June of last year. All but a handful eventually agreed to new contracts, but the Figueroa Hotel and a handful of others, including the Glendale Hilton and the Hilton Garden Inn El Segundo, held out.
Rahim Ladha, a spokesman for private equity firm BentallGreenOak, or BGO, which owns the Figueroa Hotel, confirmed that the firm and the hotel's operator, Highgate Hotels, had agreed to the deal, but declined to provide further comment.
As the union continues to try to reach agreements with the remaining hotels, one of Unite Here's three presidents, Kurt Petersen, said the union is determined to win greater concessions from hotels that have not signed up. “If you fight, you pay more. That's our motto. Everyone who has decided to prolong this fight should pay a small tax.”
Nohelia Gonzalez, who has worked as a housekeeper at the hotel for three years, said the contract campaign has been difficult for her and other workers. On a normal morning, she wakes up at 3:40 a.m. to make the three-hour commute from the San Fernando Valley to the hotel before her 8 a.m. shift. But during the strike, she woke up even earlier to make it to the 7 a.m. picket lines.
Gonzalez, 54, was on the picket line in January when several of his co-workers were injured by small metal balls. fired by some type of air rifle.
“It has been very hard, we have had horrible experiences,” Gonzalez said. “It was a long and hard-fought battle. [The agreement] “It means the world to many of us.”
It was not clear exactly how many laid-off food and beverage workers would be rehired. Sparrow Italia and La Casita at Driftwood, two other food outlets at the famed hotel that closed in February, were not included in the deal and remain closed.
Recalled employees who decide to return to work at Café Fig, Bar Magnolia and the workers' cafeteria will be incorporated into the existing bargaining unit of Hotel Figueroa workers, but their terms of employment will have to be negotiated separately, said Hernandez, the union spokesman.
Tensions among restaurant workers at the Hotel Figueroa erupted shortly after the Noble 33 hotel group took over the hotel’s food and beverage operations in 2021, according to workers and union organizers. Workers said they were forced to take various jobs without more pay when their colleagues left and management failed to fill vacant positions.
In December, food and beverage workers at Noble 33 notified management that they intended to form a union and filed the necessary paperwork to do so. Days later, Noble 33 announced that it would close all food and beverage services at the hotel.
Noble 33 continued with the closures, laying off about 100 employees in February.
Shortly afterward, the hotel hired a new, outside management company to handle food and beverage services. Unite Here Local 11 filed a complaint with the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office alleging that the hotel and the new food operator had violated the city’s “right to return” law that requires new hotel owners or operators to retain the establishment’s employees during a transition period.
The Figueroa Hotel at the time denied the premise of the workers' complaint, stating that it was acting in accordance with worker retention laws.
