wfn.org | UCC and its Cleveland hotel pledge neutrality toward

[BARBARA_POWELL.parti@ecunet.org (BARBARA POWELL)]

union organizing
June 24, 1999
Ron Stief, press contact
(216) 736-3273
stiefr@ucc.org
On the Web: http://www.ucc.org

Union contact:  
Ken Ilg, President, Local 10
(216) 241-3670

Church and its Cleveland hotel
pledge neutrality toward union organizing

     CLEVELAND -- Owners of the United Church of
Christ's Radisson Hotel at Gateway today (June 24) announced a
groundbreaking agreement clearing the way for a union organizing
drive among the hotel's employees.
     Officials of the United Church of Christ ownership
corporation and Local 10 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant
Employees Union announced a "card-check neutrality agreement"
at a downtown news conference outside the hotel, 651 Huron
Road.  Under the agreement, Marathon Associates, which
manages the hotel for the church corporation, will not interfere
when Local 10 files an intent to organize in the coming months.
     It is the first such agreement in recent memory in
Cleveland's hotel industry, said Ken Ilg, president of Local 10. 
"Bringing justice to working people on the job is becoming more
and more difficult," Ilg said.  "These types of agreements are
essential to organizing workers in an atmosphere free of
intimidation.  In this instance, the church is playing its traditional
role:  providing moral leadership in the community."
     "Agreeing on a pledge of neutrality in advance is almost
unheard of in an industry where management routinely fights bitter
campaigns against workers who attempt to organize," said the
Rev. Dr. Thomas E. Dipko, head of the UCC-related United
Church Board for Homeland Ministries, the majority owner of the
hotel.  "This is an expression of the United Church of Christ's
historic commitment to the right of workers to collective
bargaining."
     "The United Church of Christ's national body, the General
Synod, has urged the church to 'treat employees as you would like
to be treated,'" said the Rev. Dr. Paul H. Sherry, president of the
1.4-million-member church, whose national offices on Prospect
Avenue adjoin the hotel.  "The Synod has also urged employers to
respect workers' rights and dignity and to create a climate
'conducive to workers' autonomous decision to organize.'  We
believe the agreement announced today is in that very spirit and
we feel very pleased that it has worked out so well."
     Instead of an election supervised by the National Labor
Relations Board, the agreement gives employees the right to
choose representation by filling out a card at work or at home.
Cards will be collected by Local 10 and submitted to the
Cleveland Workers Rights Board. If a majority of eligible workers
fills out cards, the union may request recognition as the exclusive
bargaining agent for the workers and the hotel becomes a union
hotel.
     "Elections for union representation have become a long
and arduous process, where results can be challenged by both
sides, and where a confrontational posture is often adopted from
the very beginning," said Ron Stief, minister for labor relations and
economic justice with the United Church Board for Homeland
Ministries.  "During the card-check period, both sides agree to
refrain from strikes, lockouts, punitive actions or even disparaging
remarks.  Both are bound to a presentation of the facts."
     The agreement resulted from months of discussion and
meetings among national leaders of the United Church of Christ,
Local 10, local pastors of the UCC and the union's national
organizing office in Washington, D.C.
     Some 30 employees will be eligible for collective
bargaining at the eight-story, 142-room hotel, which opened in
June 1998.  Eligible employees include all regular full- and part-
time hotel service, housekeeping, food, beverage, laundry, front-
desk and parking employees, as well as bell persons and
telephone operators.
     The hotel is owned by a limited liability corporation
formed by nonprofit national bodies of the church.  The hotel is
open to the public at competitive rates.  National agencies of the
church use the hotel at reduced rates to save money on the dozens
of board and committee meetings they hold in Cleveland each
year.
     The United Church of Christ, with some 6,000 local
congregations throughout the United States and Puerto Rico, has
had national offices in Cleveland since 1990.
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