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September 25, 2008, 5:30-7:30 p.m., Doubletree Hotel, Rohnert Park

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Napa moves Ritz, Kimpton hotels ahead, requires new job data

NAPA – Days before approving two more luxury hotels in the booming downtown market, Napa city officials passed a key change in project policy, mandating that new hotel applicants complete an employee assessment study.

The planning commission last week opened up review of the 351-room Ritz-Carlton May 21 and will take comment on the project until its hearing June 19. Meanwhile, the Napa City Council gave its approval to a 196-room Kimpton Hotel.

The new policy, approved May 6, requires applications to include a report “that provides a comprehensive overview regarding hotel employment,” including the number of employees both full- and part-time, titles, wages by position, benefits and the anticipated breakdown of employees living in and out of the county. It also requires a description of any programs implemented for employee housing or traffic mitigation, as well as an assessment of the project’s impact on the local economy, housing and transportation.

Although the policy has been in development for some time, its approval coincided with the recent appearances in Napa of Bay Area union organizers.

“We have been monitoring the situation in Napa for some time. There are a lot of hotels happening that are larger in scale and luxury than Napa has seen before,” said Owen Li, a research analyst for Unite Here, Local 2850 of Oakland, a hotel and restaurant international employee union.

“The concerns are, given the explosive growth of hotels, is what conditions there will be for workers at those hotels and that they are approving expansion without a guarantee of quality of jobs.”

Last month, the group advertised plans to hire a Napa union organizer, but Mr. Li said that idea has since been pulled and officials are not actively pursuing new unionization. But he and other union officials continued to attend hotel project meetings last week, including the city council’s new mandate that hotel proposals include an employment research study.

“They were asking for things already included in the new policies,” said Napa Economic Development Director Cassandra Walker of the union leaders’ appearance at a recent city council meeting. “It is interesting because the labor market in Napa is so much smaller than other areas. Why they are targeting us is interesting to me.”

A recent study by the Napa County Workforce Investment Board showed that Napa hospitality wages are higher than in surrounding areas, but a labor expert said Napa is still an obvious location for hotel employee organization.

“The union effort is clearly a response to the growing number of larger hotels in Napa, which is where they typically organize. If you look at the hotels in San Francisco that are union, you will see a lot of the same names showing up in Napa,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman for the Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

“They tend to be very thoughtful about where they go and when they do go they have a very high success rate,” he said.

Currently, Unite represents employees in more than 70 hotels in San Francisco and San Mateo County, including several Hiltons, a Sheraton, Westin, Mariott, Omni and others, but its only North Bay representation is at the Sheraton Petaluma.

Several hotel representatives in the valley had mixed feelings about the appearance of a union in Napa for other reasons than the possibility of higher wages.

“I worked in a hotel for many years where a union emerged and I got the sense of a real separation in terms of how property employees and management relates to each other and how grievances are handled,” said Sean Dempsey, spokesman for the Meritage Resort at Napa.

“We would rather keep our employees happy ... than cause a big division in employees.”

Mr. Li said Unite applauds the effort by the city to monitor employment and the union will continue to watch the council’s efforts. Officials have approved dozens of hotel projects in recent years that will add an estimated 1,500 new rooms to the city in the next ten years.

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