Some three dozen pickets stood on the sidewalk outside the regal St. Paul Hotel over the lunch hour Tuesday to draw attention to ongoing negotiations for workers at the Rice Park landmark.

Nancy Goldman, president of the Unite Here Local 17, the hospitality union that represents 165 members at the hotel, said the four-star hotel used to set the standard in town for wages, but now has fallen behind the Thunderbird and Hilton Garden Inn hotels in Bloomington and the Normandy Inn in downtown Minneapolis.

The union has been negotiating with employer Morrissey Hospitality Cos. since November over wages, health care and pension benefits. A session was scheduled Tuesday afternoon and the picket was designed to apply pressure, Goldman said. Their chant was an in-your-face: "This hotel is cheap as hell."

Bill Morrissey, president of Morrissey Hospitality, said the company loves its employees and was to present a new offer at the bargaining table Tuesday so he didn't want to comment on the assertions of the picketers other than to say, "Why they did what they did today, I don't know."

Goldman said the company hasn't agree to the 2, 2, and 4 percent wages over the next three years that other hotels have. "They used to want to pay the highest wages and attract the best workers, they don't want to do that anymore," she said.

ROCHELLE OLSON