Forming a Social Movement Through Labor: Coalition Building at the New Otani Hotel

By Ryan Masaaki Yokota

They're fighting for their rights. They're fighting for their dignity. And they aren't about to give up.

So say the workers at Little Tokyo's New Otani Hotel who are currently attempting to organize a union. In an attempt to cross ethnic and racial boundaries, a coalition of workers, community groups, and students are striving for the impossible - not just to organize workers in the hotel, but even further, to create a social movement that will revitalize Los Angeles.

And indeed the workers have many barriers to overcome. Besides the problem of pressuring an international company, the New Otani corporation, to accept a union, the union organizers have also found it difficult to negotiate the diverse social and cultural backgrounds of the 280 workers at the hotel who are 60% Latina/o and 25% Asian Pacific (mainly consisting of Japanese, Japanese-Americans, and Pilipina/os). This, coupled with the problems of garnering public support from the Asian Pacific community without resorting to Japan-bashing against a Japanese corporation have made the campaign quite a challenge.

And yet many supporters of the union drive identify its potential for transforming the social fabric of L.A. As Miya Iwataki, legislative chair of the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations (NCRR), stated, "the labor force is one area where all ethnicities come together and all ethnicities suffer the same type of employment discrimination and poor working conditions."

David Monkawa, also from NCRR, added that this struggle "builds unity between Asians and Latinos and also raises the need for corporations to be a lot more fair to the communities that host them and that employs them."

To deal with the problems of multiethnic organizing, Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local 11 has taken a unique approach. Instead of the traditional approach of appealing for union recognition through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a government agency watered down by decades of corporate encroachments on workers' rights, Local 11 has made a direct appeal to the community for aid.

And the community has answered. Forming a coalition of several Asian Pacific community groups, including NCRR, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), and Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates (KIWA), the New Otani Workers Support Committee is driven by community and student leaders. The committee has taken on the responsibilities of gaining support within the Asian Pacific community. Even more, committee members bring with them a wealth of knowledge about the history of Little Tokyo and the problems that the Kajima corporation, parent company of New Otani, caused in Little Tokyo during the redevelopment struggles of the late 1970's.

Students have played an important role in the support committee activities. As UCLA student Alyssa Kang, a student intern in the support committee, stated, "we want workers to realize that they're not in this alone, that we as an Asian Pacific community are supporting their efforts."

The support committee is also striving to promote education about the campaign to other community organizations. Through these activities, the committee hopes to build community support for the workers who have come forward to fight in the union struggle.

Students have also mobilized other students to demonstrate solidarity for the workers. UCLA graduate student Alex Tan joined a recent union rally in Little Tokyo and stated, "[students must realize that] the university is not separate from the rest of the world. You know that there are people out here who are suffering and we have to help these people out."

Students and Asian Pacific community members emphasize the need to forge greater links between the different communities of color in Los Angeles in order to address the common problems of poverty and disenfranchisement.

With the current backlash in the media focusing on the strained relations between Asian Pacifics and other ethnicities, the time for inter-ethnic and interracial coalition building is of the utmost importance, and it is within organized labor that the greatest achievements can occur. For example, recently hotel workers won a union contract at the Koreana/Wilshire Plaza hotel. The victory came mere days after the Latina/o and Korean-American workforce joined in solidarity. This accomplishment highlights the incredible potential of labor alliances to help heal the wounds of a city ravaged by interracial conflict.

Organizing low-income workers into unions can alleviate economic problems in the city. Urban planner Mike Davis wrote in a recent L.A. Times article, "The worst slums in the metropolis-Lennox, Pico-Union, City College-tend to have the largest concentrations of low wage hotel and food-service employees."

Community activists see unionization as a way in which to truly rebuild the city. According to Lisa Durán of the Labor/Community Strategy Center, "if we want to rebuild the city into a city where everyone can eat, get around with adequate transportation, and have health care, we have to rebuild it through a high-wage union economy, because if we [don't], . . . we're going to have what we've already seen, a polarization of income and rising racial tensions.

In cities such as Hawaii, San Francisco, NY, and Las Vegas (with a unionization rate of 90%) wages for hotel workers stand at levels 50% higher than the $6-$7 an hour average earned by hotel workers in L.A.

Unionization, will mean not only higher wages for workers but also a rise in the standard of living for workers and their home communities.

According to David Monkawa of NCRR, "when hotel workers who live in the hardest hit areas of the 1992 civil unrest win a union contract, it means millions of dollars worth of benefits and wages going into raising the material life of those communities."

With a rise in living conditions, less strain will be placed on social services to provide for the needs of the L.A. population. This means that greater responsibility will be placed on the shoulders of corporations instead of burdening the taxpaying citizens and an already strained government bureaucracy.

It has been with this mission of bettering L.A. that workers and their community supporters have joined forces to unionize the New Otani Hotel and it is due to their overarching vision of social change that they have fought so passionately in this cause. They are truly demonstrating that a new social movement is sweeping through the city.

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