The Long Beach Yacht Club, which first met in 1929 at the city’s Pacific Coast Club, is so old Long Beach that it seems to run on something called noblesse oblige: the French phrase emphasizing the moral obligation of the high and mighty to be nice to the rest of us.

You don’t hear much about noblesse oblige today, but it could account for the family atmosphere at what remains one of Long Beach’s more exclusive institutions—and for the fact that two of its busboys, brothers Aleno and Jose Torres, have together worked there more than 50 years. Servers, too, may stay a decade or more—and one of the club’s more recent hires, bartender John Warner, actually left a higher-paying post at Allegria downtown to come here.

“Sometimes a little personal contact means a lot,” says Warner, 29. “My life has been changed by working there. I met my girlfriend there; she’s not a member but her mom is. From cradle to grave, the employees know people at that club.”

And, until their union contract lapsed earlier this year, the Yacht Club—which occupies city-owned land on Alamitos Bay—took very good care of its 53 employees, who are represented by Unite HERE, Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union Local 681.

The new contract, still being negotiated, features a three percent wage increase for employees who aren’t tipped—basically, cost-of-living—but it’s the company’s healthcare proposal that has workers worried.

The company wants to raise the eligibility requirement for health insurance from working 17 hours a week to working 30 hours a week. The club’s professional contract negotiator Pat Rea says this is due mainly to increased costs the club pays for health insurance, and not to its recently revised land lease with the city—which, interestingly, has the club paying rent that’s above market value.

“The method of qualifying for the benefits today is not real-world,” Rea says, pointing out that the company has offered “to pay a significant portion of the employee-only costs—95 percent of the employee-only costs, and 85 percent of the dependent-only costs.”

And the union has dug in its heels, to the point where, at a Dec. 10 bargaining session, the company gave notice that it reserved the right to implement the 30-hour requirement at any time. Yacht Club Commodore Mike Van Dyke did not respond to a District request for an interview, and the club’s general manager did not return telephone calls requesting comment.

Yacht Club employees worry that if that happens, older employees with more seniority and lighter schedules may have to “cannibalize” hours from other employees to keep their own benefits. They pleaded their case at the last two Long Beach City Council meetings, and passed out informational leaflets at last weekend’s Naples Boat Parade.

But City Council members may have a hard time trying to help–despite the Yacht Club’s location, and the fact that when they’re elected, council members automatically become honorary Yacht Club members. “Just the fact that it exists on city land is not enough . . . to weigh in on labor disputes,” City Attorney Bob Shannon told the council at its Dec. 4 meeting. Mayor Bob Foster—who, like Third District Councilman Gary DeLong, was a Yacht Club member before he joined the council and became an honorary member—says the council has to be circumspect where union negotiations are concerned.

“It’s collective bargaining,” says Foster, reiterating a pledge he made to Yacht Club employees at the Dec. 11 City Council meeting: “I as a member would be willing to pay a little extra to ensure that the employees there have health insurance.”

That appears to be where the matter rests. But employees like Warner, the bartender—who averages only 25 hours of work each week himself—wonder what else this new union contract might say about their future.

“The commodore, Mike Van Dyke, came into negotiations yesterday,” Warner said Dec. 11. “He said he wanted to tell us it’s not personal. And I said, ‘No, it’s very personal.’ I almost feel like the faces are being lost in the rhetoric.”

Tags: contract negotiations, labor, Long Beach, News, union, yacht club