After more than a year of appeals and little progress, hotel workers are asking for hotel clients and community members to boycott the Long Beach Hilton, owned and operated by HEI Hotels & Resorts. The workers held a press conference calling on the community to boycott the hotel until management agrees to honor the workers’ rights to decide whether to form a union in a manner free of intimidation and harassment.

Several clients of the Long Beach Hilton have expressed support for the workers’ position and have pledged to pull their business from the hotel if the hotel does not agree to a fair process that would allow its workers to decide – freely and democratically – whether to form a union at their workplace. Edith Guffey of the United Church for Christ (UCC), a future client of the hotel said, “If a labor dispute is in effect as we come closer to [our event date], it is most likely that we would…be unable to use the Long Beach Hilton as a General Synod hotel.”

The Long Beach Hilton will become the first hotel in Long beach where a boycott is underway, and the second HEI hotel that is currently under boycott.

“I stand by the workers in calling a boycott of the Long Beach Hilton,” said CSULB Professor James Thing, member of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs & a Healthy Community. “Many of the parents and guardians of our students work in the hotel industry and rely on fair working conditions and adequate health care for themselves and their families.”

Workers also do not have access to affordable health care—family plans can cost several hundred dollars a month—forcing some to rely on government assistance to pay for medical care for themselves and their families.

“When we see injustice in our communities, it is our responsibility to stand up and be counted,” said Steve Neal, 9th district City Council candidate and Executive Director of the Labor Community Services Food and Emergency Program. "I will not eat, sleep or meet at the Long Beach Hilton, and will urge others to respect this boycott until the workers are treated with respect and dignity.”

“For over a year, we have struggled to address our concerns with the managers at the hotel and let them know that we want them to agree to a fair process that will allow us, the workers, to decide to join a union in a manner free of intimidation and harassment,” said Elizabeth Martinez, waitress at the hotel. “Calling for a boycott is not an easy decision for us to make, but we have tried all other options and this is the only one left.”