UNITE HERE LOCAL 11: Ahead of Days of Awe, Over 80 Jewish Leaders, Including Paul Koretz, Boycott Hotels in the Heart of Pico-Robertson
30 Septiembre 2024 - 7:44PM
Business Wire
Jewish leaders, congregations and organizations
mobilize in solidarity with hotel workers at Cameo Beverly Hills
and Marriott Beverly Hills
As the Jewish community prepares for holiest period of the
Jewish calendar in the coming weeks, over eighty leaders in the
Jewish community have signed a pledge calling for a boycott of the
Remington Hospitality-operated Cameo Beverly Hills Hotel and
Marriott Beverly Hills, two hotels located in the heart of
Pico-Robertson, over labor issues. The signatories include
prominent leaders like Paul Koretz, rabbis, Jewish communal leaders
and community members; and congregations and organizations like
Boyle Heights Chavurah, Congregation Or Hamidbar, the national
Jewish Labor Committee, the Jewish Liberation Fund, Keeping It
Sacred, and Nefesh LA.
“We learn in our Jewish tradition to uphold the dignity of work
and workers. Paying workers a timely fair wage is part of that
tradition. In keeping with our values we, as Jewish community
leaders, ask the Cameo Beverly Hills and Marriott Beverly Hills,
hotels located in neighborhoods where many Jewish Angelenos live
and host guests, to be fair and just to their workers. We hope that
you will move quickly to do so,” said Rabbi Susan Goldberg, Nefesh
LA.
Adds Rabbi Robin Podolsky, “I will support this boycott. We are
taught in our tradition: ‘You may not oppress your neighbor or rob
them; the wages of a hired worker may not stay with you all night,’
(Leviticus 19:13) and ‘You may not oppress a hired servant who is
poor and needy whether he is of your people or of the strangers who
are in the land within your gate,’ (Deuteronomy 24:14). Even in our
secular society, I do believe that these are very good principles
to live by.”
The growth of the boycott comes as over 40 Hollywood writers,
editors and producers pledged to boycott the hotels over Labor day
weekend, as well as over 80 political leaders.
Workers launched a boycott of Remington Hospitality’s Beverly
Hills-adjacent properties, the Cameo Hotel Beverly Hills and
Marriott Beverly Hills hotels, in August. The Cameo has failed to
agree to a fair contract for its unionized employees. The Marriott
has refused to agree to a fair process for workers to decide
whether to unionize.
The Cameo is also subject of a pending “wage theft” complaint
filed with the California Labor Commissioner alleging that the
hotel has failed to pay housekeeping workers for “off the clock”
work performed prior to their scheduled shifts and that workers
have been unable to take rest breaks to which they are legally
entitled. The workers’ union, UNITE HERE Local 11, has also
presented these allegations to the Los Angeles Police Commission,
which is charged under the newly passed Responsible Hotel Ordinance
with determining whether to award the Cameo a permit to
operate.
The boycott follows a year of strikes across the Southern
California hotel sector that have resulted in historic wage
increases and other improvements for workers at 73 hotels. The
Cameo, along with the Hilton Garden Inn El Segundo, have failed to
sign this historic agreement.
UNITE HERE Local 11 is a labor union
representing more than 32,000 hospitality workers in Southern
California and Arizona who work in hotels, restaurants,
universities, convention centers and airports
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Maria Hernandez | 623-340-8047 | mhernandez@unitehere11.org