Strike snarls service at major Hawaii hotels

Nation's Restaurant News, March 19, 1990 by Richard Martin

Strike snaris service at major Hawaii hotels

HONOLULU -- Hammered by Hawaii's biggest strike in 25 years, 11 major hotels suspended room service and closed restaurants as supervisors manned makeshift buffets and replacement workers were flown in from as far away as Pennsylvania.

The strike over wages by 7,500 employees affected scores of restaurants and a total of 9,300 rooms--about 15 percent of the state's accommodations -- at eight hotels on Oahu and three on Kauai, Maui and Hawaii Island. Picket lines were set up at all 11 properties.

Hardest hit was Oahu's Waikiki Beach area, the state's leading mecca for tourists, where an estimated 40 percent of all hotel rooms suffered service cuts.

Restaurants near the afflicted hotels said their sales increased as much as 20 percent following reductions in the resorts' meal services. "We're pulling people all the way from the Hyatt Regency," said M. Y. Ching, general manager of Waikiki Denny's, located several blocks from that hotel.

A Domino's Pizza manager said deliveries had increased dramatically from Waikiki-area units of his chain.

Hotel food and beverage executives reacted to their massive labor shortage by indefinitely canceling room service, shifting to buffet operations, shuttering many restaurants and lounges, and joining other non-union managers in cooking and service roles.

One Waikiki hotel reportedly kept its banquet trade afloat by hiring and housing the entire staff of a local catering company.

Hawaii's largest hotel, the 2,523-room Hilton Hawaiian Village here, hired 400 local replacement workers immediately after 1,798 of its 2,165 employees walked off the job.

The other hotels on Oahu affected by the strike were the Hyatt Regency Waikiki, the Sheraton Waikiki, the Kahala Hilton, the Sheraton Moana Surfrider, the Ilikai, the Princess Kaiulani Sheraton and the Royal Hawaiian Sheraton. The Sheraton Kauai, Sheraton Maui and Kona Hilton were also struck on neighboring islands.

Several hotels offered room-rate reductions of 20 percent and 25 percent to appease disgruntled lodgers following the walkouts by members of Local 5 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. In addition to experiencing disruptions in foodservice operations, the hotels had difficulties making beds, manning switchboards and checking guests in and out.

Contract talks broke off between the union and the Council of Hawaii Hotels after union leaders withdrew their proposal for a 10-percent boost in wages and benefits and rejected management's offer of a 7-percent increase.

Insisting that the offer amounted to a hike of only 4.6 percent, union officials said they would hold out for their initial goal: a 15-percent surcharge on food and beverage sales and a 5-percent surcharge on rooms, to be divided among workers.

Rod Rodriguez, a union spokesman, said the hotel workers' average wages of $8.10 an hour are less than those earned at hotels with lower occupancy rates in large, mainland cities.

He said management's wage offer was unfairly low in contrast to Hawaii's high cost of living and what he said were steep increases in room tariffs at the state's hotels in recent years.

Threatened by the possible expansion of the strike, the hotel operators would be pressured to come to terms because "they're coming up to a peak period when they are overbooked," Rodriguez asserted.

William Crawford, executive director of the hotel council, denounced the union's proposal for an unprecedented "folio tax" on rooms, to be paid to untipped workers, and a mandatory service charge on meals and drinks, payable to the foodservice staff. "The concept is unacceptable even if it were for a 50-cent surcharge," Crawford said.

He called the union's comparisons between hotel wages in Hawaii and in mainland cities "hogwash."

Hotel operators sounded resolute despite lost sales, fears of canceled bookings and widespread discontent among thousands of vacationing guests, some of whom moved to unaffected hotels.

"We're prepared to go on until it's over," said Jeanne Park, public-relations director for Hilton Hotels in Hawaii, which flew replacement workers in from Hilton hotels in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Los Angeles to staff properties where workers were striking.

The Hilton Hawaiian Village closed three of its five Hilton-run restaurants after the hotel lost 83 percent of its staff in the strike, Park said. A beachfront restaurant within earshot of angry picketers was among the three closed operations, she explained.

"The guests are a little dismayed by it all," Park said. However, two Hilton buffets and 22 other restaurants, snack bars and lounges run by outside concessionaires remained open at the Hawaiian Village property, she added.

Guests had fewer choices at other hotels, all of which halted room service. At the Kahala Hilton the hotel's Hawaiian floor shows were canceled, and only one restaurant remained open, offering a daylong buffet.

At the Sheraton Waikiki guests' only alternatives to buffets were in-room snacks from mini-bars that were not restocked upon depletion.