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Vol. 73/No. 39      October 12, 2009

 
Boston unionists support
fired Hyatt housekeepers
 
BY TED LEONARD  
BOSTON—Some 400 workers and their supporters walked a lively picket line and rallied September 18 in front of the Hyatt Regency Boston hotel. Union officials of UNITE HERE Local 26, which organized the protest, said the company had fired almost all of its housekeepers in its three area hotels. Workers on the picket line chanted “Shame on Hyatt!” and “Put them back to work!”

Local 26 organizes hotel workers in the area but does not have a contract with Hyatt.

“In the history of Boston hotels this has never happened before and we are not going to let it happen now,” declared Local 26 president Janice Loux at the rally.

One of the fired housekeepers who worked at Hyatt’s downtown hotel addressed the rally in Cantonese. She said that on August 31 the company called the workers to a meeting in the afternoon and told them to return their IDs and uniforms. They were then escorted out of the building by security.

Many of the 100 workers fired, according to a union statement, had worked for the hotel for more than 20 years. They earned around $15 an hour and had health and dental benefits. They were replaced by workers employed by a subcontractor, Hospitality Staffing Solutions. The Georgia-based company pays its employees minimum wage and provides no benefits.

Fired workers have said that in some cases they trained the workers who replaced them. The company issued a statement denying that charge. The statement cited economic hardship for the layoff and said some management positions at the three hotels had also been eliminated.

Serendu Kamara, who had worked at the Hyatt Harborside Hotel for five years, described her experience at the rally: “Imagine, they let you work for eight hours and then tell you you’re fired.”

Lucine Williams, another fired worker, told the rally, “Somebody ought to stop these corporations from just kicking me and you to the curb. You know, one thing I’m happy about today is that we all can come together.”

The president of the Greater Boston Central Labor Council and officials from the Service Employees International Union, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, and the Carpenters union also addressed the rally.

The workers received two weeks of pay when they were fired and one week of pay for every year they worked at the Hyatt up to five or 10 years, depending on which hotel they had worked at, reported the Boston Globe.

The paper also reported that Hyatt would extend medical benefits to the end of the year. Originally they were to expire at the end of September.
 
 
Related articles:
Puerto Rico unions call one-day strike
UK rail car cleaners go on strike
New York: Transit workers rally for pay raise  
 
 
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