A union's effort to represent employees of a Hartford hotel is turning traditional labor roles upside down -- the company is demanding a union election and the union says it doesn't want one.
The Waterford Group, which has an ownership stake in the Marriott Hotel at Adriaen's Landing, took the unusual step of asking the National Labor Relations Board to schedule an election so its 240 employees can decide if they want to be represented by UNITE HERE, a national hotel workers union. Such requests are almost always made by unions and staunchly resisted by businesses.
The union, meanwhile, is pressuring the Marriott to sign what it calls a "labor peace agreement" to avoid litigation and smooth the way for an organizing campaign.
"As unions are now looking for a means outside the NLRB processes to represent employees, now we have unions using novel tactics involving political and social pressure to try to have employees represented by them," said John Cotter, assistant regional director for the labor board in Hartford. "As unions use new tactics, it's not too surprising that employers use novel arguments to bring the board into the procedure."
Requests by companies for a union election comprised less than 2 percent of the more than 2,600 board-supervised elections in 2005.
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