Beyond The Hyatt

[plumtreeblossom]

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

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

plumtreeblossom, thank you so much for bringing this cause to my attention.

It gets even worse, though.

I guess firing all those workers was really necessary for Hyatt Chairman and CEO Mark Hoplamazian to keep his total compensation of $6.7 million this past year. The money had to come from somewhere, right? We wouldn't want him to give up those bonuses and stock options.

This practice is not new.

I would not be surprised if these workers turn around and pay over a substantial portion of their salary for room and board to either HSS or a third party. It's modern day indentured servitude.

But from the workers' point of view, depending on their country of origin, even if they are left with $1/h in spending money, this is a small fortune, which is usually send straight back to the family overseas. This practice was very common with the Chinese restaurant industry a while back.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

It just makes me sick to my stomach. I hope the compensation packages of all of the Hyatt's top brass are made public knowledge.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

The story has been picked up by Kos, and our Congressman, Mike Capuano, is leading the call for a boycott.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I am SO glad Kos picked it up. That's the kind of spotlight this heinous act deserves.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

I was actually going to respond that you should diary about it on DailyKos, but someone else wrote something before I was able to respond to you.

It looks like our Rep. Capuano is also on the case.

What bothers me is that I doubt this practice is limited to just Hyatt.

This practice has cropped up before, as the DailyKos post notes with the Circuit City Incident.

What a better segway into the next battle after Health Care: the Employee Free Choice Act.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

"Community-based network for employee recruiting"? Does that mean anything at all? Good thing people like you know how to read corporate gobbledegook! Of course, when they talk about working with their associates on English and integration into their communities, you can tell what they're really talking about is moving people around.

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

What they mean is that they lure people from 3rd world countries, people to whom $8 sounds like a fortune, who are led to believe that they will be living the good life working in fancy hotels. On the website are stock photography photos of beautiful, smiling models in crisp, attractive uniforms waiting on elegant tables and tidying beautiful rooms. What they don't know is that they'll be living in poverty akin to what they endure in their home countries, and that on their $8 wage they will never be able to afford to go home again. Trapped. It wouldn't surprise me if some of them are forced into prostitution or drug dealing just to keep a roof over their heads.