The Chateau Marmont and hospitality union UNITE HERE Local 11 have reached a settlement agreement after the National Labor Relations Board says a regional investigation found that the hotel violated the National Labor Relations Act.
The agreement, which was approved by the NLRB on Dec. 17, requires that the hotel post notices reminding employees of protected labor activities “in prominent places” where employees gather around the hotel and mail notices to employees laid off in March 2020. The settlement also requires that the hotel “comply with all the terms and provisions of said Notice.” The notice, reviewed by The Hollywood Reporter, tells workers they have a right to organize and affirms the employer will not interfere with any organizing or place workers under surveillance, among other points. A representative for the NLRB confirmed the settlement and that NLRB Region 31, which covers the Los Angeles area, “found that the employer violated the National Labor Relations Act.”
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A labor counsel for the Chateau said the settlement was not an admission of guilt, but “a business decision to resolve the matter and avoid wasteful litigation.”
The settlement proceeds from an unfair labor practices charge that the union, which represents hotel employees and began organizing Chateau workers pre-pandemic, filed with the NLRB last summer. The complaint alleged that the hotel violated section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act and employee rights by “engaging in surveillance or creating impression of surveillance of employees’ union activities” during earlier protests at the Chateau calling for the hotel to rehire more employees laid off during the pandemic. (In December the Chateau sent a right-to-recall notice to nearly 100 former employees based on city tenure guidelines for positions that are being rehired, to give them the chance to return to work, a hotel spokesperson says. The spokesperson adds that the Chateau has already hired over two dozen former employees in adherence to right-to-recall guidelines. In 2020, laid-off Chateau workers organized to help pass Los Angeles right-to-recall and worker retention legislation to give certain employees laid off during the pandemic the ability to return to work when positions open up again.)
In a statement, Lawrence Stone, the Chateau Marmont’s labor counsel, claimed that on April 23, 2021, UNITE HERE Local 11 members and “paid agitators” unlawfully “stormed” the hotel and “threatened” employees and guests. He adds, “the claim that was settled resulted directly from Unite Here’s illegal activity.” A source at UNITE HERE Local 11 responded that the claim resulted instead from management surveilling workers, and that workers engaged in “lawful, peaceful protests protected by the First Amendment and the NLRA.”
In a statement, housekeeper Martha Moran said in response to the settlement, “I gave 33 years of my life to the Chateau Marmont and never once did I feel seen or heard. Yet the moment my coworkers and I began to speak out, the hotel started watching us. I am glad that the federal government has sided with us and recognized our rights to organize.”
The fight between the Chateau and the union isn’t over yet, settlement notwithstanding. On Dec. 23, UNITE HERE Local 11 filed a new NLRB charge, claiming that in the last six months the employer had violated section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act by “promising benefits in response to an organizing campaign, by interrogating workers about their union sympathies, and by soliciting workers’ grievances during an organizing campaign in violation of its workers’ rights guaranteed under Section 7 of the Act.”
According to the union, in November the Chateau conducted a series of interviews with former housekeeping workers asking them what would bring them back to work and promising free health insurance, an offer that was later confirmed in the hotel’s right-to-recall notices. Former workers were also told their salaries would be higher than they were previously if they returned to work, the union says. The union says expensive health insurance was a worker grievance during their organizing drive of the hotel, and frames the new perks of the job as a potentially temporary bribe. Says a source at the union, “We want all workers to have free health insurance and we want workers to be paid more … We want them to have the best [but] it’s a very classic manipulation tactic. As soon as the organizing drive ends, the hotel can rescind it. There’s no guarantee unless it’s enshrined in a contract.”
Chateau Marmont labor counsel Stone says that, when it comes to the union’s latest charge, “it is impossible to make a reasoned assessment, because, in the three weeks since filing it, although they found time to issue a press release, they have yet to present any evidence to the NLRB.” A hotel spokesperson adds that it is now providing free Kaiser Permanente health insurance to all employees, not just those who formerly worked at the hotel and were laid off during the pandemic.
In September 2020, following the layoffs of over 200 workers at the Chateau in mid-March 2020 without offers of severance packages or extended health insurance, more than 30 former workers at the hotel alleged sexual misconduct, racial discrimination and labor concerns at their prior workplace in a story in THR. In ensuing months the hotel was hit with several civil lawsuits funded by UNITE HERE Local 11 and a starry boycott of the hotel from A-listers such as Jane Fonda and Alfonso Cuarón, with support by industry unions including SAG-AFTRA, IATSE and the WGA. Planned shoots at the hotel for the Paramount+ series The Offer and the Amazon Studios film Being the Ricardos were also canceled amid the boycott.
