On Strike in NYC

NY Daily News's Albor Ruiz reports on the ongoing strike by JFK Airport Hotel workers against three airport hotels which have refused to recognize their union.

It's almost Christmas - not the best time to be on

strike.



Yet, despite the owner's pressures, tricks and

provocations, the working men and women - many of them immigrants - who have

been on the picket line for two months against three hotels near metropolitan

area airports, are not budging.



"We are going to be out here as long as it takes,"

said Narda Valle, a Bolivian native who, after 13 years at the Crowne Plaza

LaGuardia hotel, makes all of $8.25 an hour.



She was one of about 25 striking workers who,

bundled up in parkas, hats and gloves, braved a cold wind to picket outside the

Crowne Plaza last Thursday.



"We are not taking their abuse any more," Valle

said. "Until they sit at the bargaining table with us, we will remain

here."



"They," of course, is management. And in this case

it is the owner of the three hotels, a man by the name of Martin Field, who has

refused to recognize the union, even if the majority of his employees voted for

joining the Hotel-Motel Trades Council in August. That vote was certified by the

National Labor Relations Board.



Meanwhile, at the same time, he shamelessly nickels-and-dimes

the workers and filed for bankruptcy for the Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn hotels

he owns in Pennsylvania, Field hired the legal firm of Proskauer Rose - to the

tune of $700,000 - to do whatever it takes to keep the union out of a trio of

New York-area hotels.

If "Proskauer Rose" sounds familiar, that's because we've seen them before