Veteran cook Frank Santos and a coworker who were laid off from Terranea Resort’s hotel last year are returning to work in the wake of complaints filed against the resort with California’s labor commissioner, but Santos says he’s lost his seniority and is taking a $2-an-hour pay cut.
In filings last month, Santos, fellow cook Fiel Manalese and three banquet workers alleged the Rancho Palos Verdes resort failed to recall them to their former positions in violation of Senate Bill 93. Santos and Manalese have been rehired, but the status of the banquet workers is unknown.
Last month, Terranea said it had already recalled more than 600 furloughed and laid off employees since reopening and would continue to do so moving forward as business levels permit.
SB 93, signed into law in April, requires hotels, event centers and other hospitality businesses to offer employees who were laid off due to the COVID-19 downturn an opportunity to return to their jobs in order of seniority.
The legislation provides job protection to some 700,000 laid-off housekeepers, cooks, waiters and others across California.
“They brought me in for orientation a couple days ago and I expect to start work next week,” Santos said Friday. “But they are treating us like we’re new people. I worked there for seven years before the pandemic.”
The 63-year-old Lomita resident, who has been on unemployment since being laid off May 11, 2020, said he’s glad to be back to work. But he’ll be taking a financial hit. He previously worked as a junior sous chef at Terranea, earning $23 an hour, but he said he’s been downgraded to Cook 1 status and will be paid $21 hourly.
“They are rehiring us, but they’re also trying to humiliate us,” he said. “They’ve also been hiring people with less seniority, so they can pay them less.”
In a statement released Friday, Terranea said it has been forced to revamp its operations.
“Some employees were recalled in new positions when their previous position was phased out due to changes in our business environment,” management said. “They are paid at the appropriate rate for the new job, and in parity with their colleagues in the same job. We believe we have fully complied with the law.”
Unite Here Local 11, which supports the workers’ effort to unionize, said the resort laid off workers en masse at the outset of the pandemic without extending their healthcare or making a commitment to recall them when business picked up again.
Santos was at the forefront of the campaign that won passage of SB 93. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, was another key advocate for the bill.
“Given Terranea’s history of mistreating their workers, it was no surprise that the company wouldn’t respect the rights of their workers until they filed the first formal complaint to enforce our rehire rights law,” Gonzalez said in a statement.
Unite Here spokeswoman Rachele Smith said the Terranea workers are motivated to unionize.
“The way they have been treated during the pandemic really took the blinders off,” she said. “They had hoped that the company cared about them, but now they can see they are clearly in it for the profit side of the business.”