The Santa Cruz Dream Inn is one of only two unionized hotels in Santa Cruz. As of Tuesday midday, the Dream Inn was still listed as a “Please Patronize” property on the Hotel Workers Union website, but if things don’t go well in planned negotiations between the union and the hotel, it may not be for much longer.
“We’re on the cusp,” Lizzie Keegan, a representative for UNITE HERE, says. “Either we’re going to have a big fight—boycott, picketing—or we’re going to reach a deal.”
On the morning of Tuesday, Nov. 23, labor leaders and management gathered in one of the banquet rooms in the Dream Inn’s Aquarius restaurant, where a mediator was set to arbitrate discussions between the union and the hotel. The hotel’s interests are represented by the operator, Joie de Vivre Hotels, which runs a number of boutique hotels around the state, and the Southern California–based developer Ensemble Real Estate, which owns an 80 percent share of the Dream Inn. The two parties were attempting to cut $300,000 from the hotel’s labor costs in the negotiations. That’s down from management’s initial target of $500,000.
Reached this morning, hotel officials declined to comment, saying it wouldn’t be appropriate to weigh in on active negotiations.
According to labor activists, after a year of discussion between Joie de Vivre, Ensemble and the union, three issues remain unresolved: insurance (the hotel currently provides insurance free for its employees, but is considering changing its policy); the eight-hour work day (the hotel would like to switch to a 7.5-hour day to avoid paying for employees’ meal time) and paid vacation. Vacation time is particularly important, Keegan says, “because at the Dream Inn there is very little turnover. Many workers have accrued a lot of vacation time and they want to be able to use it.”
For its part, the union has agreed to forgo a wage increase in order to protect insurance, holidays and meals. “We’ve been without wage increases for two years, and people are barely making it on what they have,” Keegan says, adding, “we are open to accepting another year [without an increase], or maybe longer.”
There was a lot of pressure on Tuesday’s negotiation—the hotel will reportedly receive a special rate on a new insurance plan proposed by the union if an agreement is reached this month, and if not, the hotel workers plan to go forward with a rally the day after Thanksgiving.
