Reason Enough To Boycott

[plumtreeblossom]

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.

Comments

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

As a member of UNITE-HERE Local 2661, I support this idea and would probably sit at the table for a while to help out.

[ron_newman]

I did not know this. How did you come to be part of a hotel workers' union local?

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

My workplace was organized by UNITE around 1996, IIRC; UNITE was formed out of ILGWU and ACTWU in 1995, and began to organize nonprofits as well as people in the needle and textile trades. Then UNITE and HERE merged in 2004. Thus are we now members of UNITE-HERE (for as long as UNITE-HERE remins, um, united, anyway).