Reason Enough To Boycott

Three Hyatt hotels in Boston tricked their housekeeping staffs into training outsourced "vacation replacement" workers, then laid-off the staffers and installed the outsourced workers in their place. The staffers had been making $15+ per hour with health benefits and 401Ks. Some had been with Hyatt for over 20 years. The outsourced workers will make $8 an hour with no benefits. (For those not local, $8 an hour is far below a living wage even in greater Boston's poorest neighborhoods).

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/09/17/housekeepers_lose_hyatt_jobs_to_outsourcing/

Obviously I have no personal need for hotels in Boston, but when employed I book local hotels for executives and clients all the time. I urge anyone working in administration or travel assistance, or anyone who travels for business or pleasure, to choose another chain. The article outlines how other hotel chains have dealt with economic hardship without ruining the lives of entire departments of staffers. This didn't have to happen. It's deplorable, and it makes me see red.

Beyond The Hyatt

Hospitality Staffing Solutions of Georgia, the company providing the $8hr outsourced workers who have replaced the Hyatt's housekeeping staff, are essentially trafficking in human slaves, who are brought in from outside the community and possibly outside the country, taught enough English to work, and installed. Please have a look around their website:

http://www.hssstaffing.com/

And especially this page:

http://www.hssstaffing.com/hsspeople.html

On $8hr minus taxes and other deductions, those exploited workers will have nowhere to live except homeless shelters or worse (yes, people with low-paying jobs sometimes have to live in the shelter system until something else can be worked out). The executives at HSS know this perfectly well. Let's all remind them.

Kathryne King,
Owner
kking@hssstaffing.com


Boston
(201) 800-1015
Diana Young,Area Mgr
dyoung@hssstaffing.com