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GLAA responds to Local 25 and Pride at Work on boycott of Doyle Washington Hotel
Friday, March 17, 2000
Chairman Linda Cropp
Council of the District of Columbia
441 4th Street, NW, Room 704
Washington, DC 20001
Dear Chairman Cropp:
It has come to our attention that Hotel & Restaurant Employees Local 25 and Pride at Work have sent letters urging you not to attend GLAA's April 27 anniversary reception at the Doyle Washington Hotel. The claim is made that the Doyle management has engaged in anti-worker and anti-union activities. We have been following this matter for the past year, and have found no evidence to substantiate these claims.
In the Fall 1999 issue of the Pride at Work publication "Out & Organizing," T Santora wrote: "Since buying the Doyle Hotel two years ago, the new owners have been heavily criticized for firing all former workers and voiding the union contract with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees, Local 25. Many workers had more than 20 years of service at the hotel." This statement is false in that the Doyle could not have fired the former employees of another company. Pride at Work and Local 25 have repeatedly treated the Doyle Washington as simply the Dupont Plaza under new management, when in fact it is a new hotel entirely unrelated to the hotel previously operated at the site.
Because of the confusion caused by Pride at Work and Local 25, some facts are useful. The Dupont Plaza Hotel was closed and went out of business in 1997. At that time, the Dupont Plaza's owners settled their contract with Local 25 and paid Local 25 several hundred thousand dollars. The building on that site was then sold to the Doyle Group. The Doyle Washington Hotel opened a year and a half later after extensive renovation to the building.
In October 1999, the Doyle established domestic partner benefits for its employees, including health insurance benefits. In an October 29, 1999 press release criticizing the Doyle, Local 25 — setting aside a decade of organizing and advocacy by the District's gay and lesbian community — said this about domestic partnership: "Unlike legal marriage, domestic partnership has little legal precedent and future court cases could be disastrous. For instance, on the basis of an employee's domestic partnership affidavit, an individual could be held legally responsible for a previous partner's current debts, whether or not they were jointly incurred. If that happens, we will have secured one of the major responsibilities of marriage with only a few of the benefits." In fact, Local 25 itself does not offer domestic partner benefits to its employees. The contract Local 25 would impose on Doyle employees would remove the domestic partner benefits currently provided by the Doyle.
The fact that the Doyle explicitly includes sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policies is dismissed by Local 25 and Pride at Work, which claim that the only way to secure such protections is with a collective bargaining agreement. While they are certainly free to persuade Doyle employees of the wisdom of such a course, it is harmful to the gay community's interests to disparage corporations that do the right thing in establishing such policies.
Bob Witeck of Witeck-Combs Communications, which represents the Doyle, states: "The Doyle management respects the desires and choices of its employees.... Should its staff choose to be organized in a union bargaining arrangement, that decision is theirs to make openly, democratically and freely. Labor authorities confirm, it is unlawful for the hotel owners and management to compel this decision or to block it."
The letters to councilmembers from Local 25 and Pride at Work both state, "We believe many workers at the Doyle would want Local 25 to represent them." This suggests that Local 25 has not actually talked to the people that they are demanding to represent. It is a most paternal and anti-democratic attitude, entirely like Congress' imposition of their will on DC.
In the August 27, 1999 issue of the Washington Blade, T Santora of Pride at Work is quoted as saying that accepting a donation from the Doyle "would be like taking money from the Christian Coalition. You just don't do it." This absurd attempt to paint the Doyle as anti-gay is an insult to the gay and lesbian community. In fact, the Doyle has shown by its actions that it is one of the gay-friendliest hotels in town.
The Doyle is in fact a sponsor of both Whitman-Walker Clinic and One In Ten. In January, Whitman-Walker Communications Director Michael Cover, in an email communication to Pride at Work's T Santora, angrily denounced what he called Santora's "false and misleading statements" regarding the clinic's relation to the Doyle. Cover said to Santora, "Your credibility has been ruined at the Clinic — a union workplace which respects the labor movement."
GLAA itself has no position on the union issue, although many of our members are themselves union members. We respect employees' legal right to choose freely whether or not to unionize. Unfortunately, as the present controversy demonstrates, labor activists can be unscrupulous, just as management can be. Local 25 and Pride at Work seek to impose a union contract on the Doyle employees, not respect their free choice and go through the process available to them. Not content to attack a gay-friendly hotel for the failure of its employees so far to choose unionization, they now seek to harm the 29-year-old dean of local gay organizations, GLAA, by urging public officials and others not to attend our annual reception. GLAA's event is the only event among many at the Doyle that these groups have chosen to target.
We urge you not to be misled by the unsubstantiated claims of Pride at Work and Local 25 on this matter. We also hope that GLAA will continue to have your support and cooperation in our ongoing effort to provide scrupulous, fair-minded, and non-partisan advocacy on behalf of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender citizens of Washington, DC.
Sincerely,
Bob Summersgill, President
Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, DC
P.O. Box 75265
Washington, DC 20013-5265
Phone: 202-667-5139
Web: http://www.glaa.org
Email: summersgill@yahoo.com
cc: D.C. Council
Mayor Anthony Williams
Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton
Carlene Cheatam
The Washington Blade
Washington City Paper
The InTowner