Hotel workers strike at the Park Hyatt Chicago

After nearly two years of negotiations, housekeepers, dishwashers, bellmen and other hotel workers are going on strike at the Park Hyatt. Hyatt, a company that has more cash on hand than most of its competitors combined, wants to outsource work and impose dangerous working conditions on housekeepers. Today’s strike in Chicago coincides with Hyatt protests led by Hyatt housekeepers in nine cities nationwide, who are stepping out of the shadows to demand an end to the abuses they face at work.

Hotel housekeepers are the invisible backbone of the hotel industry. The grittier aspects of their jobs—the work of scrubbing toilets, changing sheets, and encountering guests alone behind closed doors—are the hidden foundation on which an atmosphere of luxury and comfort are built. Through UNITE HERE, the union representing hotel and other hospitality workers across North America, housekeepers are stepping forward and breaking the silence on the many dangers they face at work.

Nationwide, Chicago-based Hyatt has sparked controversy for its abuse of housekeepers and for replacing long-term employees with workers from temporary agencies at far lower rates of pay. In Boston, Hyatt fired its entire housekeeping staff at three non-union hotels, replacing women who had worked at Hyatt for decades with temporary workers at far lower rates of pay. Housekeepers at some Hyatts clean as many as 30 rooms a day, nearly double what is typically required at union hotels. In Chicago, workers say Hyatt has not adequately addressed their concerns about housekeeping workload and subcontracting at the negotiating table.

“Hyatt abuses housekeepers. They are hoping we will suffer in silence, but today housekeepers are standing up here in Chicago and across the nation,” says Ofelia Martinez, a housekeeper at the Park Hyatt.

Academic studies have shown housekeeping to be dangerous work that can lead to debilitating injuries. In a study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine examining a total of 50 hotel properties from 5 different hotel companies, Hyatt housekeepers had the highest injury rate of all housekeepers studied by hotel company.

“Hyatt is one of the most abusive hotels in their treatment of housekeepers and has the worst record on subcontracting,” says Henry Tamarin, the President of UNITE HERE Local 1. “They refuse to budge on these important issues, and now workers are taking action.”

UNITE HERE Local 1 represents approximately 170 workers at the Park Hyatt. Contracts for Hyatt workers expired on August 31, 2009. A month ago on June 20, workers at the Hyatt Regency Chicago also carried out a daylong strike. There have been several other work stoppages at Hyatt in recent months. In May 2010, Hyatt Regency workers—led by more than 100 housekeepers—walked off the job, protesting worsening working conditions in housekeeping after a major hotel renovation. In September 2010, workers at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Rosemont, Ill. carried out a one-day strike. The strike will last from 7:00am-7:00pm Thursday.

Hotel workers strike at the Hyatt Regency Chicago

Hundreds of religious leaders to join workers on the picket line at world’s largest Hyatt

After 20 months of negotiations, housekeepers, dishwashers, bellmen and other hotel workers are going on strike at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, the largest Hyatt property in the world. Hyatt, a company run by billionaires, wants to outsource work and impose dangerous working conditions on housekeepers. Workers also say they want to be able to show solidarity with Hyatt workers elsewhere. Under Hyatt’s current terms, they would be forced to waive their right to do so.

Hundreds of religious leaders are joining workers on the picket lines today. Rabbis and other Jewish communal leaders have played a key role nationally in building support for Hyatt workers across North America. Most notably in Chicago, Jewish leaders have led delegations to top Hyatt executives at Hyatt Global Headquarters in December 2009 and at Hyatt’s first annual shareholders meeting in Chicago in June 2010. Over 200 Jewish leaders nationwide have signed onto a national pledge to honor Hyatt boycotts and strikes.

Nationwide, Hyatt has sparked controversy for its abuse of housekeepers and for replacing long-term employees with workers from temporary agencies at far lower rates of pay. As a result, Hyatt has faced numerous strikes and dozens of demonstrations nationally in recent years.

“Our bodies hurt, but Hyatt is ignoring us. We will no longer suffer in silence,” says Cecilia Leiva, a housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

Academic studies have shown housekeeping to be dangerous work that can lead to debilitating injuries. A landmark study of 50 hotels published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine in 2010 found that housekeepers working at Hyatt hotels had the highest rate of injury for housekeepers among the five major hotel companies included in the study.

“Hyatt is one of the most abusive hotels in their treatment of housekeepers and has the worst record on subcontracting,” says Henry Tamarin, the President of UNITE HERE Local 1. “They refuse to budge on these important issues, and now workers have hit a boiling point.”

Nationwide, the hotel industry is rebounding faster and stronger than expected, with a hearty rebound projected in 2011 and 2012. Hyatt has more cash on hand than most of the major hotel operators combined, and yet across North America Hyatt continues to lock workers into poverty.

UNITE HERE Local 1 represents over 700 workers at the Hyatt Regency, the 2019-room hotel on Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago. Contracts for Hyatt workers expired on August 31, 2009. In May 2010, Hyatt Regency workers—led by more than 100 housekeepers—walked off the job, protesting worsening working conditions in housekeeping after a major hotel renovation. In September 2010, workers at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Rosemont, Ill. carried out a one-day strike. The strike will last from 4:00am-8:00pm Monday.

Hundreds join Congress Hotel Strikers at 8th Anniversary Rally

Today, strikers at the Congress Hotel, joined by hundreds of community supporters and members of UNITE HERE Local 1, are rallying outside the Congress Hotel to commemorate the 8th Anniversary of the Congress Hotel Strike, now the longest hotel strike in American history.

On June 15, 2003, members of UNITE HERE Local 1 working at the Congress Hotel went out on strike after the hotel decided to freeze wages until 2010, refused to pay healthcare premiums for its employees (effectively eliminating employee healthcare benefits), and demanded the ability to subcontract out all bargaining unit work at the hotel.

Since the time that negotiations began, the Congress Hotel has never offered a proposal with increases in wages or the company’s share of healthcare costs from the rates listed in the contract that expired in 2002. The last bargaining session was in the summer of 2010. The union will be in negotiations with the Congress Hotel again in early July 2011.

“This fight is my life,” says Rene Patino, who worked at the Congress Hotel for three years before the strike began and has been on strike with his wife Maria. “If we quit with the strike, I know that the other hotels would take the same position as the Congress. Wages are still around $8 an hour and they don’t want to have any responsibility to the workers at all.”

There are about 60 active remaining strikers, who both actively picket the Congress hotel and have led a campaign statewide to bring an end to the Congress Hotel Strike. Working families in Chicago have made astounding gains in recent years because the Congress strikers have refused to settle for substandard wages. At the time that the strike began, Chicago housekeepers were making just $8.83 an hour, compared to $15.10 an hour today. To ensure that hotel jobs in this city are strong, family-sustaining jobs, Congress strikers have taken the fight to the streets of Chicago and all over the world.

UNITE HERE Local 1, the union representing hotel workers in downtown Chicago has recently reached citywide agreements with Starwood Hotels and Hilton Worldwide after. The settlements effectively resolve all hotel contract disputes in Chicago, except those with the Congress and Hyatt Hotels.

Housekeepers nationwide speak out, launching campaign to end silence on hotel dangers

In light of the Strauss-Kahn and other assault controversies, housekeepers in Chicago and seven across North America hold public events, speaking out against abuses at work

Today hotel housekeepers in Chicago and seven cities across North America will hold coordinated speak-outs to break the silence on the dangers of their jobs, and to call on the thousands of housekeepers across the country to do the same. Inspired by the courageous stand taken by the housekeepers in New York against some of the most powerful men in the world, housekeepers are coming forward to share their own stories and launch a campaign to break the silence about the routine sexual misconduct and other forms of abuse that housekeepers face at work.

Hotel housekeepers–overwhelmingly women, immigrants, and people of color–are the invisible backbone of the hotel industry. While incidents of sexual assault are uncommon, women routinely face indecent exposure and other indignities from male guests. Housekeepers have come forward with stories from across North America that reveals a pervasive pattern of harassment and unsafe working conditions for the women who work in the hotel industry.

Sexual assault is one of a range of hazards that housekeepers experience. The rate of injury among hotel workers is 25 percent higher than among service workers overall. Among hotel workers, housekeepers have the highest rate of injury—50 percent higher than hotel workers overall.

“It’s dangerous work,” says Yazmin Vazquez, who works at a hotel in downtown Chicago. “These customers think they can use us for anything they want, because we don’t have the power that they have or the money that they have.”

Standing together, housekeepers are also demonstrating that a union is a powerful tool for workers when harassment and other hazards occur. In New York and elsewhere, many safety measures are already in place for union hotel workers, who know they can report incidents to their superiors without the fear of reprisal.

As part of the action, housekeepers are recommending a number of common sense preventative measures to help them feel safer, such as increased security staff, working in teams, and replacing the traditional dress uniform with a pants and tunic uniform. In addition, the union fully supports the legislation recently introduced in the New York State legislature to provide panic buttons to employees to use in case of emergency.

Events will be held in Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Phoenix, Boston, San Antonio, and Indianapolis.

UNITE HERE and Starwood Hotels reach settlements in Chicago

After 20 months of negotiations, labor pact allows 3200 area hotel workers to share in industry recovery

After 20 months of bargaining, UNITE HERE Local 1 and Starwood Hotels have reached settlements in Chicago. The agreement affects 1200 Starwood workers at the Sheraton Hotel, Westin Michigan Avenue, Westin River North, W Lakeshore, W City Center, and the Tremont, as well as approximately 2000 workers in 16 other hotels, where hotel operators have signed pattern agreements tied to the Sheraton contract. Agreements were ratified by Starwood workers yesterday, April 19, 2011.

Coming on the heels of a settlement with Hilton Worldwide in early March 2011, the agreement between UNITE HERE and Starwood represents another major breakthrough in citywide hotel negotiations and a path forward for hotel workers as the hospitality industry emerges from the recession. Nationwide, the hotel industry is already rebounding faster and stronger than expected. Smith Travel reported that for year end 2010, revPAR was up 5.5% nationally. PKF Hospitality projects that hotel revenues will rise an average of 8% annually from now through 2014.

The new contracts include decent wage increases and improved job stability language, while preserving low-cost, high-quality healthcare and pension benefits for hotel workers and their families at a time when nationwide these employee benefits are being cut. Over the life of the contract, wages for non-tipped workers will increase $1.80, raising the wage of a housekeeper, for instance, from $14.60 today to $16.40 when the contract expires in 2013.

“This settlement is good for Chicago, good for Starwood and good for our members,” says Henry Tamarin, President of UNITE HERE Local 1.

“More and more work was being subcontracted out, even while my friends and coworkers were laid off. I’m proud to say that our new contract will stop that from happening,” says Diane Chestnut, a cocktail server at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers. “Now that the hotel recession is behind us and profits are up, it’s important that jobs come back too.”

Agreements for Starwood and other hotel workers in downtown Chicago expired August 31, 2009. Since that time Starwood hotel properties have faced numerous labor demonstrations, including pickets, a limited duration walkout in August 2010, and a brief boycott, launched on April 1, 2011.

The settlement with Starwood effectively resolves all remaining hotel contract disputes in Chicago, except those with Hyatt Hotels and the Congress Hotel, the site of the longest hotel strike in history.

Teachers, hotel workers and allies unite to take on billionaire Pritzkers

More than 1000 picket at Hyatt before marching to “WE ARE ONE” action on Daley Plaza

Today, more than 1000 housekeepers, teachers from across the state of Illinois, and community allies held a special joint demonstration at the Hyatt Regency. Like the billionaire Kochs in Wisconsin, the Pritzkers in Chicago, who run Hyatt, are contributing funds to back legislation that attacks the hard-won rights of working people in this country. More than 1000 union members and allies picketed at Hyatt before marching to Daley Plaza to join thousands more participating in the “WE ARE ONE” action in Chicago, sponsored by the AFL-CIO, in protest of attacks on workers’ rights nationally.

In Illinois, the billionaire Pritzkers who run Hyatt have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Stand for Children’s Illinois political action committee, which is pushing a “reform package” in Springfield that would weaken teacher tenure and effectively eliminate the ability of teachers to strike. In the hotel industry, Hyatt Hotels is leading the fight against middle class jobs for hotel workers. Hyatt workers in Chicago have been in a protracted contract dispute with Hyatt Hotels (NYSE: H) and have taken part in a wave of demonstrations in recent months, protesting Hyatt and its billionaire ownership family, the Pritzkers.

 

 

Participants in today’s rally at Hyatt included hundreds of members of UNITE HERE Local 1, Chicago’s hospitality workers union, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT), including IFT President Daniel Montgomery, the Illinois Education Association (IEA), including IEA President Ken Swanson, and community allies in the Grassroots Collaborative.

“We are delighted that the teachers are with us today, standing together against the powerful financial interests of the billionaire Pritzker Family here in Chicago, who not only own the Hyatt Hotel chain but also are backing Stand For Children, an initiative that seeks to undermine teachers’ collective bargaining rights in Illinois,” says Henry Tamarin, the President of UNITE HERE Local 1. “In Wisconsin, it is the Kochs that are the billionaires behind the attack on workers’ rights. In Illinois, it’s the Pritzkers.”

 

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UNITE HERE Local 1, Chicago’s hospitality workers union, represents over 15,000 hotel and food service workers in Chicago and casino workers in Northwest Indiana. The Chicago Teachers Union represents 30,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in the Chicago Public Schools and, by extension, the students and families they serve. CTU, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers, is the third largest teachers’ local in the country and the largest local in Illinois. IEA is an association of more than 133,000 members composed of Illinois elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty and staff, educational support professionals, retired educators and college students preparing to become teachers. The Illinois Federation of Teachers is a union of 103,000 women and men in a wide range of professions who are dedicated to improving the lives of IFT members and providing quality education and public services for Illinois students and citizens. Grassroots Collaborative is a community-labor coalition working on economic justice in Chicago and statewide.

In run-offs, UNITE HERE Local 1 sways 50th Ward and other key city council races

UNITE HERE-backed Silverstein unseats longest-serving Alderman Berny Stone

With hundreds of UNITE HERE Local 1 members knocking on doors this election season, the union representing hospitality workers in Chicago helped sway a number of key city council races. The union’s support helped land decisive victories for candidates, most notably Debra Silverstein, who has unseated the longest-serving city council member Bernard Stone (50th).

Early on, Local 1 took aim at the longest-serving alderman, Bernard Stone (50th Ward), who has sided with the Congress Hotel in City Hall against the members Local 1, who have been on strike for nearly 8 years. Members of Local 1—one of the first groups to get behind his opponent Debra Silverstein—knocked on 20,000 doors in the 50th Ward. Their efforts made Silverstein the clear frontrunner among Stone’s opposition in the February election, paving the way for her defeat of Stone in the April run-off elections.

“I could not have gotten this far without UNITE HERE. I have been totally overwhelmed by the support they have provided to us,” says Silverstein.

Overall, UNITE HERE Local 1 provided 500 volunteers to aldermanic campaigns, who knocked on over 50,000 doors. UNITE HERE Local 1 boasts a diverse membership, and was able to provide support to campaigns across Chicago, including reaching out to Latino voters in wards where they are crucial swing voters..

“What’s happened in Arizona and Wisconsin—we don’t want that here,” says Jose Sarabia, a Local 1 canvasser, who works as a server at the Avenue Hotel. “That’s why the participation of the Latino community in these elections is so important.”

UNITE HERE Local 1 focused on candidates who have shown leadership on issues important to its members in the hospitality industry, such as a living wage for airport workers, support for area Hyatt and Congress Hotel boycotts, and the creation of good jobs in public venues like the public schools and McCormick Place.

The union of housekeepers, dishwashers, and cooks represents workers across Chicago’s hospitality industry, including downtown hotel workers, food service workers at area universities, airport service workers at both Chicago airports, and casino workers in Northwest Indiana. The union has made waves in recent months with strikes and demonstrations, taking on hotel heavyweights like Chicago-based Hyatt.