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Hotel union
leadership rift
leads to lawsuit
over Unity House

---

By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

A top-level split in leadership of the two unions that operate Unity House has resulted in a lawsuit.

A faction led by Eric Gill is suing to prevent a faction led by Tony Rutledge from removing the Gill group from Unity House membership.

Gill, financial secretary of Local 5, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union; Orlando Soriano, Local 5 president; Mel Kahele, president, Hawaii Teamsters and Allied Workers, Local 996; and Ronan Kozuma, Local 996 secretary-treasurer, want to block the move by the Rutledge faction.

Rutledge, defeated by Gill in the most recent Local 5 election, is a Unity House director, along with Arlene Ilae, Berna Iosua, Randolph Borges, Anthony Rutledge Jr. and Norberto Castillo, all named as defendants in the suit along with Unity House itself.

The suit seeks a court order to stop the Rutledge group from taking any action to suspend or expel or affect membership rights of the Gill faction without a prior hearing where the Gill group can present witnesses, cross-examine, present exhibits, confront their accuser and be represented by counsel.

Reached later, Rutledge who hadn't seen the complaint, repeated comments in his feud with Gill.

"There's no question they need to be removed," he said.

"There's a bunch of reasons -- our understanding that they are violating their fiduciary duty with Unity House by trying to disband Unity House and take the monies and split it between Local 5 and Local 996 which they cannot do," Rutledge said.

"They are not looking after our best interest (which is to) serve other members of other organizations, retirees, other beneficiaries and friends of labor."

Soriano, who has been a director of Unity House for a couple years, is "just following their lead," Rutledge said. "We've been under attack for 10 years from these kinds of people. ... We're tired of being a scapegoat."

Rutledge stressed the Unity House board has reason to remove the Gill element.

"They've been conspiring and they've extended their conspiracy by taking certain actions, and publicly made statements to that effect," he said.

"We haven't done anything yet but inform them we have a meeting coming up, and the board will be reviewing actions taken over a period of time and determine whether they should continue as members or not."

Gill had no detailed response to the Rutledge remarks, except to say: "If I'm being accused of trying to protect the best interests of Local 5 and its members, I plead guilty to that."

The Gill complaint says the Unity House board planned to meet tomorrow to "vote on disciplinary matters, either suspension or expulsion, against certain Unity House members," also that Gill, Kozuma and Kahele received letters claiming they had attended a meeting "for the express purpose of dividing the assets of Unity House" between Local 5 and Local 996, allegations they all deny.