Union authorizes strike at 6 Marriott hotels on Oahu, Maui
HONOLULU — A Hawaii hospitality industry union has authorized a strike at six hotels operated by Marriott on Oahu and Maui.
Members of the Unite Here Local 5 union voted Monday for a strike if contract negotiations with Marriott are not settled soon.
The union vote covers nearly 3,500 workers at the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort and Spa, the Sheraton Waikiki, the Royal Hawaiian, the Moana Surfrider and the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani in Honolulu, as well as the Sheraton Maui Resort and Spa in Lahaina.
About 95 percent of the hotel workers supported the measure, which is the first in a series of strike votes planned by union members at Marriott properties in Hawaii, Boston and San Francisco.
The union has been in contract negotiations with Marriott since June, said Eric Gill, the Local 5 secretary-treasurer.
“Our proposal is to make one job enough to live in Hawaii,” Gill said. “Marriott’s proposal is to get another job.”
Julie Gabot, a housekeeper at the Sheraton Waikiki, said that she voted yes for the strike “because our hotels keep squeezing us to work harder, while we get less. We need to fight for proper staffing and reasonable workloads so we can be healthy when we retire and not broken down.”
Sailor’s remains from Pearl Harbor IDed as Virginia man
WASHINGTON — The remains of a U.S. serviceman killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor have been identified as those of a Virginia man.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the sailor in a news release Tuesday as 23-year-old Navy Seaman 1st Class James W. Holzhauer. No hometown was listed.
The agency says Holzhauer was assigned to the battleship USS Oklahoma when it was attacked by Japanese aircraft and capsized, killing 429 crewmen.
In September 1947, after 35 disinterred remains were identified, the unidentified remains were buried and eventually classified as non-recoverable, including Holzhauer.
In April 2015, the Deputy Secretary of Defense issued a call for disinterment of unknowns from the Oklahoma. A combination of DNA analysis, anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence identified the remains as those of Holzhauer.
US identifies 2 Korean War dead from North Korea remains
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says that two Korean War dead have been identified from remains turned over to the U.S. in July by North Korea.
Mattis tells Pentagon reporters Tuesday that experts moved swiftly on analyzing those two sets of remains, as they thought they had a good chance of identifying them because of where they were located and other information.
He didn’t publicly identify them.
North Korea turned over 55 boxes of remains to U.S. officials at Wonsan, North Korea, on July 27. The Defense Department laboratory in Hawaii is working to identify them. Last month, the department identified one service member whose dog tag was returned.
Mattis says talks are ongoing with North Korea to get additional remains repatriated.