Union Leader Accused of Racial Discrimination

By Minerva Canto, The Orange County Register, Calif.

Her dream was to inject energy into the hotel and restaurant workers union. When Ada Torres won election as president, she had visions of housekeepers, cooks and others taking to the streets, demanding higher wages and better benefits. 

At 28, she was the youngest person and the first Hispanic to hold that office, a native of Nicaragua who took a special interest in fellow immigrants who are helping revive flagging union membership rolls in Orange County and elsewhere. Torres was, as she puts it, "gung-ho" about the possibilities for Local 681 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union. 

Two years later, Torres faces mounting criticism and accusations of racial discrimination. Some members and former employees claim she is authoritarian and does not give anyone a chance to speak out unless they happen to be her allies. Several accuse her of favoring Latino immigrants. Dissident groups are forming to challenge her bid for re-election next year. 

Torres is aware of the criticism, but says she has won improvements in pay and benefits for many members, and that the criticism has helped her build leadership skills. 

"I think this is a democratic process, and I respect what their feelings are," Torres said during a recent interview in her Garden Grove office. 

The dispute comes to light at a time when unions nationwide are relying on immigrant workers to increase membership rolls, grooming Latino leaders to help them recruit those new members, and at times, serving as the launching pad to national prominence. Cesar E. Chavez, who founded the United Farm Workers union in the 1960s, is now an icon in Latino communities. More recently, Rep. Linda Sanchez was the head of the Orange County Central Labor Council before heading to Washington, D.C. early this year. Anaheim City Councilman Richard Chavez was a vice president at the county's Central Labor Council. 

Torres said she feels the pressure of being one of few Latinos who play a leadership role countywide. 

"It is hard in Orange County being a Latina leader and being young," said Torres, who has no previous management experience. 

Some Latino union members have even accused her of faking her ethnic heritage, something she dismisses as ridiculous. 

Torres says the criticism of her performance is politics as usual, the result of resentment over changes she has made to the 70-year-old local, which represents 7,000 workers in hotels, restaurants and entertainment venues in Orange County and Long Beach. They are part of Orange County's 125,000 unionized workers, about 10 percent of the total county work force. It is a figure that has remained static for several years. Nationwide, about 13 percent of the work force belongs to unions. 

Critics say the problems with leadership go beyond changes to the local, putting the union at risk as contracts are in negotiation at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel and Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, two of the biggest employers in the region. 

"We're the spine of the hospitality industry. All we want is to get what we deserve," said Jose Arzola, 34, a worker in the housekeeping department at the Coast Hotel in Anaheim and one of Torres' most outspoken critics. 

Among other things, the native of the state of Mexico complains that Torres has not been aggressive about organizing new members to make the union more powerful. 

Instead, he believes she is more concerned with keeping her supporters happy so she can get re-elected next year. 

"I think there should be someone there who represents us, but what I'm seeing is that our union leader isn't watching out for our interests," he said. Despite the criticism, Al Ybarra, executive secretary of the Orange County Central Labor Council, said he thinks Torres is successful, partly because "she has her membership in her heart when she's negotiating." 

"I sat in during a negotiating session with her," said Ybarra, a veteran of labor organizing for more than 40 years. "The general manager of the hotel refused to continue, and got up to leave. But she wouldn't let him go. She told him, 'We are here to negotiate, and that's what we're going to do.' And he sat down." 

Last month, Torres took her place at a makeshift stage next to the Anaheim Hilton Hotel and led a crowd of at least 200 workers, mostly immigrants, and union supporters in a chant of "Si se puede!" which means "Yes, we can!" Afterward, everyone filed out in front of the hotel, marching for almost an hour, holding aloft signs with messages such as "Justice for hotel workers now." 

To Antonio Rodriguez, a native Mexican who has worked at the Hilton for 17 years, the rally was a powerful testament to how Torres has energized his fellow immigrant workers. 

"Today, I see them enthused," said Rodriguez, 54, who took a stab organizing for the union about 10 years ago. 

"Back then, no one seemed to care. It was difficult to get people involved. Not so many people turned out. But things are different. She's the one who encourages them." 

Torres, whose recent cost-trimming included a 10 percent pay cut for herself, leaving an annual salary of $50,000, said she is pleased with what she's done so far. Among her accomplishments, she points to: A Los Alamitos Racetrack contract that gave a 3 percent raise to workers whose pay had not changed for five years. 

A Disneyland Park contract that gave workers five minutes of paid time to get to their cars or bus stops after their shifts. 

Immigration clauses that guarantee job seniority if work permits expire. 

But not everyone agrees that the changes have helped the union, whose members in Orange County and Long Beach make about $9.50 an hour and pay $29.30 a month in dues. 

Luis Sanchez, Local 681 vice president, said he has become disillusioned with Torres since they both ran for office on the same ticket. 

"I have been working almost 19 years at Disneyland hotels, and I've been a member of the executive board. 

People supported her because of me, but soon after she was elected we began to see the other side of Ada," Sanchez said. 

Sanchez said he has not been permitted to review any financial records. He has questioned expenditures she made and claims that the union is financially strapped. 

"She's only interested in acquiring more power, and what she's trying to do is keep her supporters happy. She spends money on them and never shows receipts," Sanchez said. Torres denied any improprieties and said the books are open. 

Valerie Hollins, who resigned her job as member field representative earlier this year, said that encouraging union members to chant "Si se puede" at membership meetings and rallies divides them into camps of English- and Spanish-speakers. 

"I felt uncomfortable," said Hollins, a shop steward at Disneyland Park for 10 years. "I told her 'Why can't we have another chant in another language? People driving by are not going to understand what we're saying.' " Torres said she makes no apologies for encouraging members to chant, noting that "Si se puede," is part of the international's logo. 

But this chant, among other things, is what prompted Hollins and three other former employees to file complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging racial and age discrimination. In her complaint, Hollins, 34, complained that Torres referred to her and others as "gringos," a term Torres says she does not use. 

"It's like she's on some kind of Latino revolution or something," Hollins said. 

Suzann Milkey, 55, of Lakewood, a former secretary at Local 681, was laid off last fall along with two other workers. The youngest, a Hispanic woman who Milkey thinks is in her 20s, was rehired shortly thereafter. 

Milkey, 55, and Fran Dunlap, 63, were not. 

Torres said the young woman was hired back for her bookkeeping skills. 

Torres acknowledged that more than half her office staff of about 15 has changed since she took office, but she said it was because she expected them to work harder than before. She said she recently hired two union representatives who are not Latinos. 

"The program was not going to happen unless there were more people other than me believing in it," Torres said. 

A field representative at Disneyland park five years ago, Torres watched with admiration as members of the union's Local 11 went about their work in Los Angeles. 

They helped organize demonstrations. They spoke at rallies. They were "empowered," Torres said. 

This is what Torres wanted for Local 681, and what had attracted her to union activism in the first place. 

Torres got her first taste of the union life 11 years ago, when she landed a job as receptionist at the offices of Local 681. She was 19 and had been working as a restaurant hostess. She says the receptionist gig wasn't much more than a job, and she left to teach English to families of farm workers in Oxnard. 

Around that time, she started volunteering for the Teamsters and the Carpenters Union. She began to understand the allure of union activism that attracted Jaime Torres, a field representative she had met at Local 681 and who is now her husband. 

Five years ago, she returned to Local 681 as a field representative. She worried what her father would think, whether he would dismiss her as another sindicalista, Spanish for union activist. In their native land, as in many Latin American countries, being a union activist carried heavy political connotations. 

Torres' father, now deceased, had been an economist before political instability pushed the family to the United States when Torres was six years old. She doesn't remember much about her early childhood except for the times when family members were forced to duck underneath tables to avoid stray gunfire from shootings that marked the Somoza dictatorship. Her family lived first in Miami, moving later to San Pedro, where her father commuted to his job as a benefits- eligibility technician for Orange County government. 

As a young woman, Torres saw that unions could help improve the lives of workers who toil at physically-demanding jobs for low pay. After watching Local 11 activities, she ran for president, beating three candidates for the job, including incumbent Mary Ann Mahoney, who had hired Torres and was surprised by the challenge. 

"I did think of her as a friend, and so I was shocked," Mahoney said. 

One of the first things Torres did after her win was to visit Local 11 in Los Angeles. 

Maria Elena Durazo, its president, recalls Torres coming to her and asking for help "to rebuild Local 681." 

"She (Torres) has shown a lot of courage," Durazo said. 

"It's hard to face your members when there's disagreements and some members don't like the program." 

On July 2, Torres will celebrate her two-year anniversary as president. She plans to run again next year, and opponents are already organizing campaigns against her. 

Union member Jose Gomez is helping rally workers into a group called "Union + Democracy and Progress." Gomez, a native of Jalisco, Mexico, works two jobs, like many of the union's members. He works at the Anaheim Hilton from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and from 5 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. at Disneyland. 

Gomez said he wants a new leader because he wants to get more for his monthly dues, like forming a scholarship fund. He worries that the committee negotiating the Hilton's new contract is overly heavy with office staff. 

"We need to wake up the members so that there can be real internal change and more members can get involved," Gomez said, "because right now, it's a dead-end alley with the leaders we have." 

Published: June 8, 2003