Hyatt says it won’t put a housekeeper on its board

[Starry Messenger]

http://peoplesworld.org/hyatt-says-it-won-t-put-a-housekeeper-on-its-board/

CHICAGO - Repudiating one of its own employees, this week, Hyatt Hotels announced its nomination of a longtime financial executive and McDonald's Board Member, Cary McMillan, to join its board of directors at its shareholder meeting to be held this June.

The announcement has caused a firestorm of reaction in the ranks of the Hyatt workforce and among community leaders who have been supporting the candidacy of Cathy Youngblood, a Hyatt housekeeper.

Ongoing violation of worker rights by Hyatt is what motivated her to try for a seat on the corporate board, says Youngblood, who has been traveling across the country in the "Someone Like Me" campaign-a national initiative of the Unite Here union to have a worker added to the hotel chain's board. Since late 2012, Youngblood has been speaking with workers and community leaders across the U.S. and rallying support for what she says is much needed reform at Hyatt, which the union has dubbed "The Worst Hotel Employer in America."

"When Hyatt announced its proposal for a new member of its board of directors this week, it doubled-down on its resistance to reforming longstanding labor abuses," said Youngblood, adding, "Hyatt has an opportunity to demonstrate its desire to move in a new direction-to show it really cares about worker voices. Instead of nominating someone like me, Hyatt has chosen to nominate a board member from McDonald's, adding to the ranks of board members from Walmart, Goldman Sachs, and other corporate giants."

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[limpyhobbler]

1. k/r

She might not have made in onto the board of directors but this campaign is a big success in my book.

What a great way to organize and raise issues. Good speech too.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

2. This effort ought to be kept up until it succeeds and then go viral

"The concept of board-level employee representation.

Board-level employee representation involves employees representatives who sit on the supervisory board, board of directors, or similar structures, in companies (this section draws on "Workers directors - a comparative study of five countries (Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland and the Netherlands)", Mark Carley, Hans Böckler Stiftung/Worker Directors' Group (Ireland), Düsseldorf (1998)). These employee representatives are directly elected by the workforce, or appointed in some other way, and may be employees of the companies, officials of organisations representing those employees, or individuals considered to represent the employees' interests in some way. The presence of employee representatives in the board-level structures of a company is an indirect, or representational, form of participation. It involves the expression of employees' collective interest through the intermediary of representatives and differs from direct participation in a number of ways:

it focuses on the workforce as a whole rather than individual employees or workgroups;
its fundamental aim is the achievement of democratic input into company decision-making rather than fostering employee motivation and commitment;
it is in general regulated by legislation or collective agreements, rather than being a unilateral management initiative."


http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/1998/09/study/tn9809201s.htm

[marmar]

3. k/r

[Teamster Jeff]

4. K&R

[Sirveri]

5. The Oligarchs are so freaking stupid.

You take this person in, then you woo them with power and corrupt them with trinkets. Then you turn them and have them stab those who they came from in the back. It's obvious.