Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 8, 1995                   TAG: 9503080069
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

UNION IS WATCHING HOTEL AGAIN

Hotel Roanoke was the only union hotel in the Roanoke Valley when Norfolk Southern Corp. closed it in 1989 and donated the property to Virginia Tech. The closure idled more than 100 members of Local 32 of the Food and Beverage Workers Union, of a work force of about 175.

The union, in Washington, D.C. had closed its file on the hotel, having been told that Virginia Tech would convert it to a classroom for hotel management students.

But two months ago, the president of Local 32, Minor Christian, learned that the hotel would reopen when he bumped into a beer vendor from Roanoke who was working at a Redskins football game at RFK Stadium.

Now, the union is waiting to see if the hotel's new employees will ask for representation, a step the facility's new general manager said is unnecessary.

Christian said he won't immediately contact the 300 employees who will reopen the renovated hotel alongside a new conference center April 3.

"To say we are going to go in and try to organize them, that's not what we are going to do," Christian said. "If they call, we're going to come. We're going to be there like an eagle with wings."

Gary Walton, general manager of Hotel Roanoke, said it's needless for the workers to join a union. As employees of Doubletree Hotels Corp., a hotel management company chosen to operate Hotel Roanoke and its meeting facilities, they will receive competitive wages and benefits, he said.

"Our management philosophy is we take good care of them," Walton said Tuesday.

No more than one or two of the 104 hotels Doubletree operates or franchises have union work forces, said company spokeswoman Sheila Schofield.

The 3,500-member Food and Beverage Workers Union is strong in Washington, Christian said, representing 90 percent of food-service employees at sporting arenas and government cafeterias. Its contracts with large employers cover food workers at Norfolk naval installations and a Richmond cigarette factory owned by Philip Morris, he said.

Its members also work at most hotels and restaurants in Colonial Williamsburg, he said.

James H. Wade, 80, of Roanoke, a 40-year Hotel Roanoke employee, said he helped organize the first union at the hotel in 1956 because some managers verbally abused employees. Employees cast a nearly unanimous vote for union affiliation, and the problem of mistreatment went away, said Wade, who was secretary-treasurer of the now-defunct hotel workers union.

From then until the early 1980s, the union workers negotiated often increasingly generous benefits, while giving concessions when the hotel was losing money, Wade said.

The workers struck the hotel in 1983 over what Wade said was a wholesale attempt by new managers to lower pay and benefits after a nationwide recession. The company eventually pushed through the changes, but strikers regained their jobs, Wade said.

In the 1980s, the local was merged with Local 32 of the Food and Beverage Workers Union, which negotiated for severance pay on behalf of the laid-off workers. The hotel closed, but some former employees still collect pension checks, Wade said.