PROVIDENCE – The Rhode Island Convention Center Authority (RICCA) has filed suit in federal court, challenging a city ordinance requiring that existing employees keep their jobs for at least six months if a new vendor takes over food services at any of the RICCA’s three unionized downtown facilities.

The lawsuit says the ordinance would require that new RICCA vendors pay hospitality employees at least $17.60 per hour.

The 14-page complaint, prepared by Adler Pollock & Sheehan P.C., was filed in U.S. District Court in Providence on Wednesday and seeks declaratory judgments as well as costs and expenses associated with RICCA’s filing of the suit against the “Hospitality Business Protection and Worker Retention” ordinance.

The City Council approved the ordinance Oct. 15 and it went into effect Oct. 26 without Mayor David N. Cicilline’s signature.

“There is a whole host of issues with this ordinance, beginning with the three facilities (Dunkin’ Donuts Center, Rhode Island Convention Center and Veterans Memorial Auditorium) it affects,” said David A. Duffy, RICCA chairman, in a prepared statement. “These facilities are state-owned and we don’t believe the [City] Council has the authority to create an ordinance that would legally bind the operation of state-owned properties as this would.”

“It is our belief that the ordinance contradicts existing law with regard to the state’s minimum wage and its regulation of labor [and] management relations,” Duffy continued. “Our facilities are union buildings and we have excellent relationships with our labor partners.”

The ordinance says that its main goal is to “bolster Providence as a tourist destination” and to promote the stability of the city’s hospitality businesses.

The measure defines “hospitality business” as any hotel or food-service operation within the three RICCA facilities or within “any building physically connected by internal walkways, skybridges or parking lots” to these facilities, with the exception of Providence Place mall. Among the businesses connected to the RICCA structures are the Westin Providence and the Hilton Providence.

When the employer at a hospitality business of this kind changes, the ordinance requires the new employer to retain current staff for six months, perform written evaluations for each worker and, if layoffs are necessary after six months, maintain a priority rehiring list ranking employees in order of seniority.

The measure also requires affected business to pay employees minimum wage and sets out a formula for calculating that wage. The RICCA lawsuit says the ordinance sets the minimum wage at approximately $17.60 per hour for hospitality businesses in the designated zone, significantly more than the state minimum wage of $6.75 per hour.

The RICCA in its complaint says current management services agreements with the parties in charge of food services at its three facilities are set to go out to bid in March 2010 and the authority is in a position to “take advantage of the free flow of economic forces.” However, the ordinance interferes with this, the complaint states, by imposing obligations on potential bidders, thereby “unlawfully [interfering] with the Authority’s bidding process.”

The RICCA complaint seeks declaratory judgments because, it argues, the ordinance violates the contract and equal protection clauses of the United States Constitution, preempts state labor law, preempts the National Labor Relations Act and violates the city’s own Home Rule Charter.