100 Hyatt Housekeepers Fired, Outsourced in Boston

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.jwjblog.org/2009/09/100-hyatt-housekeepers-fired-outsourced-in-boston/

By Allison Fletcher Acosta, on September 18th, 2009

On August 31 all 100 housekeepers at Hyatt’s three Boston area hotels were fired. They were given their last paychecks, told to clean out their lockers and leave. Some had worked for Hyatt for more than 20 years.

The housekeepers had been told they were training workers who would be filling in for vacations, but they had in fact been training their replacements. Upon being fired, they were immediately replaced by workers from an out-of-state subcontractor Hyatt brought in which will pay workers $8/hour with no benefits.

Last night, more than 400 people, including members of Massachusetts JwJ and UNITE HERE Local 26 gathered outside the Hyatt Regency Boston to demand that they give workers their jobs back. Several state and local politicians attended the rally, and Mayor Menino issued a statement in support of the workers. Stay tuned for updates on this story.

[MichiganVote]

1. I wonder if Hyatt gets city or state tax breaks?

[MUAD_DIB]

3. Possibly the get both.

[47of74]

2. There's some real untrustworthy types in that business

Down in Cedar Rapids the company that used to run the Crowne Plaza - Kronos Hotels - was a real piece of work. They hadn't been paying bills, owed hundreds of thousands in back taxes, employee paychecks bounced, health benefits were canceled, and they pretty much let the hotel go to pot during their time running the hotel.

http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/45453732.html
http://www.bizzia.com/franchisepick/holiday-inn-protest-site-targets-franchisee-kronos-hotels/
http://suburbanjournals.stltoday.com/articles/2008/12/09/stcharles/news/1210stc-holin0.txt

So unfortunately it doesn't surprise me when this kind of crap occurs in the hotel industry.