Hilton Hawaiian Village workers begin five-day strike, blame Wall Street greed

HONOLULU—At 4:00 a.m. this morning, and more than three months after union hotel contracts expired, hotel workers at the Hilton Hawaiian Village—Hilton’s largest hotel worldwide with over 3,600 rooms and 1,500 union workers—walked off the job, announcing a five-day strike protesting Hilton’s efforts to lock workers into cheap recession contracts.

The strike was organized by Unite Here Local 5, which represents over 10,500 workers throughout Hawaii who work in the hospitality, health care, and food service industries. The union expressed outrage that Hilton Hawaiian Village employees have endured staff cuts, reduced hours, and high injury rates despite Hilton’s grab at $180 million in bailout funds—taxpayer money intended to help stimulate the economy by creating jobs.

The striking workers include housekeepers, dishwashers, cooks, bell staff, food servers, and others. Workers in Hawaii now join other striking Hilton workers in San Francisco who walked off the job yesterday.

“I’m not out here just for me,” Debbie Tabar, an accounting clerk at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, said in a statement. “I’m a taxpayer, too, and I’m twice as upset over what the Hilton has done. This is not just about hotel workers, it’s about the future of our community. The taxpayer money that Hilton took was supposed to go towards helping to create jobs, and not be used to hurt workers in this economy. Hilton is just another predator of the recession. They line their pockets with taxpayer money and now they want even more from workers by using the economy as an excuse to eliminate jobs, increase our workload and lock us into a permanent recession. To me, that’s just being greedy.”

On September 15, workers at Hilton Hawaiian Village voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike, with 95 percent of union members voting in favor of a strike. Hilton Hawaiian Village workers are among nearly 6,000 other Hawaii hotel workers whose contracts expired on June 30, 2010.

Hilton Worldwide is owned by the Blackstone Group, one of Wall Street’s largest private equity firms, which manages $100 billion in assets for large pension funds and other investors around the country.

“Why should my tax dollars subsidize a growing and successful corporation like Blackstone, while thousands of working families, like mine, are struggling to pay mortgages, pay their children’s college tuition, pay for health care, and save for retirement?” said Ringo Mak, a 20-year server at the Hilton Union Square in San Francisco. “Our taxes should be used to protect good jobs, but instead, Blackstone is using our tax dollars to lock us into a permanent recession.”

Nationwide, the hotel industry is rebounding faster and stronger than expected, with a hearty rebound projected in 2011 and 2012, Local 5 said, with hotel revenue projections for Oahu up more than 7 percent in 2010. PKF Hospitality projects that hotel revenues will rise an average of 8 percent annually from 2010 through 2014.

Despite these trends showing a strong recovery for the hotel industry, hotels are still squeezing workers by cutting staff and refusing to share that recovery with their workers, according to Local 5.

“I’m out here fighting for what this community needs,” said Luciana Dupio, a housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. “We need good quality jobs that we can continue to raise our families on. I’m a hard worker and a mother, and I’m not going to be fooled by these ‘mainland’ Wall Street firms. The Hilton is doing well, business is back and I see it everyday; my body is hurting and still they want more.”