LOS ANGELES (AP) – Workers at seven hotels engaged in a 14-month labor contract dispute reached a tentative agreement early Saturday, averting a planned lockout, city and union officials announced.

The deal was reached minutes before a lockout scheduled at 5 a.m., said Maria Elena Durazo, president of Unite Here Local 11, the union that represents 2,500 employees of the seven hotels.

“We’re grateful that the essential needs of those workers have been met,” she said after a press conference at City Hall to announce the deal.

About 120 employees at one of the seven hotels went on strike Thursday, just hours before the contract had been set to expire. The strike prompted a vote by the hotel operators to lock out employees at all their hotels.

Striking workers included bellmen and desk workers at the Hyatt hotel on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, known as the “Rock and Roll Hotel” for its high-profile music bookings and glitzy location.

Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa helped broker negotiations that lasted late into the night over the past several days.

“I called the parties together and I said to both sides, ‘Los Angeles cannot afford a lockout or a strike,”‘ Villaraigosa said. “We had to find an agreement that was a win-win for both sides.”

The union and the hotels have been trying to negotiate terms of a new labor contract on and off since June 2004, when the employees’ last contract expired.

Both sides had disagreed on one key issue – the length of a new contract.

The hotel employees have been seeking a deal that would align the expiration with the 2006 expiration of contracts for employees of several other regional hotels to leverage their numbers in future contract negotiations. The hotels, however, want a deal with a longer term.

Under the new terms, the contract would expire in November 2006, Durazo said.

She said the new contract would include free health insurance, a 65-cent hourly wage hike for nontip workers over the next two years and allowing workers to use sick hours to tend to family matters.

The contract still needs to be ratified by union members, who are scheduled to vote on the deal Monday, Durazo said.

In addition to the Hyatt, the contract would cover workers at six other Los Angeles-area hotels, including the Westin, Sheraton, Regent, Westin Bonaventure, Millennium Biltmore and Wilshire Grand.

AP-ES-06-11-05 1041EDT