Fairfax Cinema’s Dan Harkham is a developer in Los Angeles. While he was failing to oversee Cinefamily, and instead of overseeing Fairfax Cinema (he has reportedly subcontracted out Fairfax Cinema’s HR functions), Harkham does hotel deals. It runs in the family.
Efrem Harkham—Dan and Sammy’s uncle and their father Uri’s younger brother—owns L.A.’s boutique Luxe hotels. Before Beverly Hills was home to Harkham’s Luxe Rodeo Drive, however, the hotel was known as the Summit Rodeo.
In the late 1990s, an ugly labor dispute consumed the L.A. hotel industry. Among the many hotels affected, the press focused on the Summit Rodeo, “the boutique-hotel-turned-labor-battleground.” A blue-ribbon panel—including Pasadena’s Rabbi Marvin Gross and then-West Hollywood City Councilman (now L.A. City Councilman) Paul Koretz—released a fact-finding report in early 1998. The report found that in the years since taking over the hotel, Efrem Harkham conducted an “aggressive campaign against workers and their union… including harassing and firing pro-union workers, videotaping and spying on workers, and attempting to indoctrinate its workers with anti-union propaganda.”
Ultimately, not only did workers go on strike, but in April 1998, “an interfaith procession of 60 priests, ministers and rabbis marched through Beverly Hills, depositing bitter herbs outside the Summit Rodeo” and calling on the hotel to negotiate a contract with its workers. Organizers recall the hotel calling police on peaceful demonstrators. The L.A. Times reported that “two months later, the Summit became the last of the hotels to reach agreement” with hotel workers. Dozens of workers had been fired, and not all returned.
Efrem Harkham denied any unfairness, telling the press at the time “the charge that we have mistreated our workers is absolute nonsense. We care very much about our employees.” Later in the article, however, he clarified that “business comes first.”
Shortly thereafter, he rebranded the hotel.
According to Fair Hotel, as this gets published, there is once more a “boycott or labor dispute” at the property.