With less than a week’s notice, all employees of the Best Western Golden Sails Hotel are being terminated, in a downsizing move under new corporate ownership.
“We have been running the hotel with low room occupancy for the last few years and have been thinking all these years to downsize the hotel with fewer rooms to stay in business,” says a December 10 memo sent to all Golden Sails employees. “Time has come now and we have reduced the size of the hotel, [… which] will operate under a new corporation as of December 16, 2012. […] All employees will be considered terminated after their last shift of duty on or before December 15, 2012 […].”
The memo goes on to state that most of the employees will be rehired by the unnamed “new corporation,” and that each employee not rehired will receive from Long Beach Golden Sails Inc. $1,000 in severance pay, so long as those employees “sign a waiver of claims.”
The memo was sent by Mathew Daniel, general manager of the Golden Sails. Daniel did not immediately reply to the Long Beach Post‘s request for comment.
The move by the Golden Sails takes place one week before Measure N takes effect. Passed by Long Beach voters in the November election, Measure N requires all hotels with over 100 rooms to pay workers a minimum of $13 per hour. Currently the Golden Sails has 170 rooms. The memo does not state whether the downsizing will bring the hotel under Measure N’s 100-room threshold.
A coalition of hotel workers, Occupy Long Beach, the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs & a Healthy Community, Clergy Laity United (CLUE), and UNITE HERE Local 11 plans to stage a protest at the Golden Sails on Saturday beginning at 7AM. A press conference on the protest is slated to take place at the Golden Sails at 11AM today.
{FG_GEOMAP [33.7630561,-118.11512879999998] FG_GEOMAP}