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Judge: Unity House
can remove Gill

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By Harold Morse
Star-Bulletin

Circuit Judge Gary Chang denied a request in a lawsuit filed by hotel and restaurant employees union leader Eric Gill and his supporters to keep former Local 5 union financial secretary Tony Rutledge and his supporters from removing the Gill faction from Unity House membership.

Chang said Unity House, a nonprofit organization operated for the benefit of Local 5 and Hawaii Teamsters members and retirees, must have bylaws to deal fairly with its membership, and said the proper thing is for Unity House to follow its own organizational procedures.

The expulsions were to be discussed at a Unity House board meeting set for today, according to the suit Chang set another hearing for Oct. 3 to check on whether due process and fairness are followed at the meeting.

Gill, financial secretary, Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 5; 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 expulsion 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.

Unity House is an independent nonprofit organization, said its spokesman, Jim Boersema. "Most people have that misconception that Unity House is kind of owned or operated by those two unions, and it's not," he said.

"It has no contractual obligation to those two unions and receives no funds from those unions," he said.