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Trustee replaces
Gill at helm of
Local 5

Western Regional exec
Sherri Chiesa takes control amid
contract and leadership battles

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By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Control of Hawaii's hotel workers' union Local 5 is now in the hands of a trustee, who was appointed by the union's international parent and will run the labor organization while a battle for leadership is resolved and new contracts for major island hotels are negotiated.

Sherri Chiesa, western regional director of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International, was named to take over the 10,000-member HERE Local 5, the international's executive vice president Ron Richardson said today.

"She'll be there this morning when they open" and her appointment is already in effect, Richardson said today from the Washington D.C. headquarters. Her appointment pushed out Eric Gill, Local 5's top officer as financial secretary-treasurer, and its executive board which has many members who support Gill's rival, Tony Rutledge.

Behind the decision to place Local 5 under trusteeship, Richardson said, is factional squabbling and the leadership dispute that has left about 8,000 of Local 5's 10,000 members without contracts.

In a closed-door Local 5 meeting Tuesday there was no opposition by Gill or other Local 5 leaders to appointing a trustee.

"I think that everybody saw that the only people who were being hurt by all this were the members," Richardson said. The labor pacts covering many of them expired as long as 18 months ago, he said.

The decision came after months of turmoil within Local 5 following Gill's narrow election defeat last year of Rutledge, who had led the union for 14 years. Rutledge remains a district vice president of the international.

Squabbling between the Gill and Rutledge factions has made it difficult for Local 5 to get on with the contract negotiations.

Last week, Local 5 members voted to reject a contract proposal from managers of Waikiki's major hotels, but Gill said the ongoing power struggle led many members to not vote. The international had accused Gill of pushing members to vote for the new contract without time to study it, but Gill told a news conference last week they voted it down because it was a bad proposal. Workers want more pay than was offered and management continued to reject Local 5's demand for an end to the subcontracting process that allows hotels to use nonunion workers, he said.

Richardson told the Star-Bulletin last week that a trustee would only stay in charge long enough to wrap up the outstanding hotel contracts and supervise a new election of Local 5 officers.

Both Gill and Rutledge have indicated that they are likely to run again for Local 5's top spot.

Leadership struggles are nothing new for Local 5, going all the way back to the days when Rutledge's father, the late Arthur Rutledge, ran it.

But the disputes in the past did not interfere with contract talks, Richardson said. "This time it's different," because the contracts aren't being finalized, he said.

The international previously placed Local 5 under a trustee in 1978, two months after challenger Richard Tam led a slate that beat both Tony and Arthur Rutledge.