HONOLULU—Over 80 rank-and-file leaders from 25 ILWU hotels met for two days at the ILWU Hall in Honolulu on June 18-19, 2007 to build unity within the industry and prepare for upcoming contract negotiations.

“Shame on you. Shame on you.” The workers say this with meaning and conviction. The words are directed at Corine Hayashi, the president and CEO of HTH Corporation which owns the Pacific Beach and Pagoda Hotels, and the shameful way the company treats its employees.

Conference delegates agreed on three major goals for negotiations at their hotels: 1) improve medical benefits by bringing more hotels into the Health and Welfare Trust Fund; 2) provide for their future security by increasing pension contributions; and 3) obtain wage increases that keep ahead of inflation.

The ILWU is a democratic union, run by the membership. The members of each hotel decide what they want to achieve in negotiations, and any settlement reached in negotiations must be approved by a membership vote.

In 2008, eleven ILWU hotels will be bargaining new contracts, and while the members at each hotel make the final decision about what goes into their contracts, delegates to the conference agreed that they must work closely together to achieve a uniform standard of wages, benefits, and working conditions in all ILWU hotels.

Hotels are business entities which compete against each other to maximize their profits, and one way management tries to beat the competition is by keeping their labor costs lower than other hotels. This means management tries to negotiate the cheapest deal in contract negotiations. Management will often point at a neighboring hotel where employees pay more for their medical benefits or where housekeepers may clean 16-18 rooms a day.

If workers at one hotel accept a cheaper deal, it can drag down the wages and conditions of other hotels. The only way workers can avoid this trap is to stand together to prevent any lowering of the standards at their hotel and to make it their goal to obtain the higher wages, benefits, and working conditions achieved at other ILWU hotel.

 —continued on page 4

ILWU elections are fair and democratic

After a thorough investigation, the US Department of Labor has dropped all complaints against the ILWU Local 142 over the union’s internal officers elections for Maui Division. The investigation by the US Department of Labor was triggered when two candidates for union office of the ILWU Maui Division charged the union with various election violations.

After weeks of extensive interviews of union members and a careful examination of over 8,000 ballots, the federal investigators could find no evidence of an unfair election, no evidence of balloting tampering, and no evidence of wrong doing by any of the hundreds of volunteers who serve on the union’s balloting committees. —continued on page 3

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