Hotel’s Labor Dispute Makes Democrats Uneasy

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will move its headquarters for the party’s national presidential convention from the nonunion Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel if a dispute over a labor election isn’t settled by next week, committee officials said Monday.

The committee has begun to consider using a unionized Santa Monica hotel.

“If we had to squeeze into smaller spaces at the Fairmont Miramar, we can do that,” committee spokesman Erik Smith said of meetings planned for next week. But housing all participants would remain a problem, he said.

The sidewalks near the Loews hotel have been the site of numerous protests this summer by the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union, which is seeking to organize about 300 hotel workers, and by community activists opposed to a hotel-led ballot measure to block a city living-wage law.

The congressional campaign committee wants the Democratic National Convention Committee to push both the union and the hotel to reach a quick agreement on how to hold an organizing election among hotel employees. If such an agreement is not reached, the congressional group wants the convention committee to help find it new accommodations.

The national convention committee “assigned us that hotel and now it’s their responsibility” to resolve the situation so campaign staff and contributors don’t have to cross protest lines, Smith said Monday.

About half of the 350 rooms at Loews are reserved for congressional campaign staff and donors during the weeklong national convention that starts Monday.

Convention committee spokesman Peter Ragone was unavailable for comment Monday. Although he has stated the party’s support for unions, Ragone recently has refused to comment on the Democrats’ possible move from the Loews hotel.

Meanwhile, Loews spokesman Richard Mintz said Monday that “we are preparing for their arrival” and that any change in the congressional group’s plans “would certainly be news to us.”

The hotel workers’ protest campaign is supported by a majority of the Santa Monica City Council and half a dozen local congressional Democrats.

The City Council has voted to study a so-called living wage law that would require large coastal-area businesses to pay at least $10.69 an hour plus benefits.

Five of the city’s luxury beach hotels fired back with a $436,000 signature-gathering drive that ultimately qualified a measure for the November ballot.

The hotel-backed measure would forbid the city from enacting such a wage law, but would raise wages for a smaller number of city-contracted workers.

Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel was the largest donor to that campaign, contributing $125,000.