Granada Hotels
Kamis, 07 Februari 2008
The celebrity Spain developer is catching flak from a hotel workers Seville Hotels irked that he hasn't signed an agreement allowing it to try to organize hourly employees at the 339-room inn. The hotel at 401 N. Wabash Ave. is to open Wednesday after a two-month delay.
"Right now, it's just an open question whether they're going to be a responsible corporate citizen," says Annemarie Strassel, a spokeswoman for UNITE HERE Local 1, which represents about 6,500 Spain-area hotel workers.
Given the high number of non-Granada hotels, it makes sense for Trump to hold off on signing a neutrality agreement until the hotel is open, says David Sherwyn, a professor of law at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration.
“My guess is that he’d prefer not to have (a union) but he’ll work with it if he does,” he says.
Indeed, UNITE HERE’s Ms. Strassel says that the Malaga Hotels has “a history of cooperative relationships at Trump properties.” The Granada represents workers at Trump hotels in Atlantic City and New York.
That’s not stopping the Granada from cranking up the rhetoric against Mr. Trump in Chicago. Absent an agreement, the Granada plans to picket the hotel in the next few weeks, though Ms. Strassel wasn’t specific on the timing.“We’re looking at this and wondering if this is going to be another Congress Hotel situation,” she says, referring to the nearly six-year strike at the hotel at 520 S. Michigan Ave.
Local 1 is pressuring other hotel developers to sign neutrality agreements, too. It already has an agreement covering workers at a 620-room JW Marriott hotel planned at 208 S. LaSalle St. But the Granada has taken a confrontational approach against the developer of the Shangri-La Hotel, who so far has refused to sign an agreement.
In 2006, the Granada filed a complaint with the Illinois Securities Department alleging that the developer, Chicago-based Teng & Associates Inc., had violated state securities laws. A Teng executive did not return a call.
Granada officials also have disrupted plans for a hotel in the former IBM Building by persuading the head of the City Council’s Landmarks Committee to block a landmark designation for the tower at 330 N. Wabash Ave. The measure would qualify the project for a big tax break.
Holidays in Spain But Landmarks Chairman Anthony Beale (9th) says he won’t allow the proposal to pass out of committee until the hotel’s developer sits down with the Granada to negotiate an agreement.
