On Tuesday November 9, Hyatt hotel housekeepers in eight cities across the U.S. are filing injury complaints with OSHA, reporting repetitive motion and other kinds of injuries sustained on the job. The landmark multi-city filing at 12 Hyatt properties that employ over 3,500 workers is the first of its kind in the private sector. A major peer-reviewed study of hotel worker injuries at 50 U.S. hotels operated by the five largest U.S. hotel companies was published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine (AJIM) earlier this year. By company, housekeepers working at Hyatt hotels in the AJIM study had the highest injury rate of those hotels studied.

The hazards associated with hotel work and service sector jobs more broadly have been largely invisible and unregulated. Serious injuries can happen slowly over time, through the repetition of certain tasks. Nevertheless, the long-term impact can result in debilitating injuries that in some instances require surgical intervention, physical therapy, or lead to permanent disability, like the loss of the full use of one’s arm.

The AJIM study found the highest injury rates among hotel workers to be in housekeeping. The study also indicated alarming differences in hotel injuries by race and gender, showing that women hotel workers were 50% more likely to be injured than men, and Hispanic women had almost double the risk of injury of their white female counterparts. The variation in injury rates across the major companies suggests room for remedies. Housekeepers working at Hyatt hotels in the AJIM study had the highest injury rate of those hotels studied, with a risk of injury almost twice that of the company with the lowest rate.

At some Hyatt properties, room attendants are required to clean as many as 30 rooms a day, nearly double what is commonly considered standard in the industry. Speeding up work by raising the room quota or adding room amenities can strain the body and lead to more accidents, like slipping on wet bathroom floors or tripping over furniture.

“Cleaning 25 to 30 rooms a day and making beds ‘hospital style’ demands working fast and lifting heavy mattresses,” says Maria Carmen Dominguez, who worked at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio as a room attendant before getting a broken tendon and permanently injuring her shoulder. “After surgery and months of physical therapy, I am still in pain anytime I lift my arm, even just to get dressed or brush my daughter’s hair.”
Dominguez also alleges that workers are discouraged from reporting injuries for fear of punishment, and that management has created a monetary disincentive for reporting injuries called “Safety Bingo,” with a lottery prize for housekeepers that grows every day that no injury is reported.
The complaints recommend to OSHA a number of remedies to reduce the health risks associated with housekeeping work. These recommendations include: fitted sheets to reduce the number of times that women must lift 100-plus pound mattresses to tuck sheets; long-handled mops and dusters, so workers do not have to get down on their hands and knees to clean the floors or climb bathtubs to reach high surfaces; and reasonable room quotas, so women no longer have to rush to finish rooms, risking slips and falls.
“There are common sense changes like fitted sheets, mops, or caps on daily room quotas that can make the difference between healthy bodies and hurt housekeepers,” says occupational health expert Gary Orr. “It is critical that we explore ways of making hotel work safe to reduce the high rates of injury that we see among housekeepers. Corporate-wide solutions are not only needed but are the most effective and less costly as they can be applied to multiple worksites.”

Complaints were filed by workers in Hyatt Hotels in the following cities: San Antonio, Chicago, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Honolulu, and Indianapolis.

Hotel ordered to offer jobs back with back pay and benefits
Union estimates lost earnings and benefits to total at least $250,000

Chicago, IL – In a major ruling this week, an administrative law judge of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found that owners and management of the Blackstone Hotel had violated federal labor law by illegally firing workers, cutting staff benefits, and circulating a petition to decertify the union. The Blackstone Hotel was ordered to offer jobs back to 14 employees who were laid off on June 15, 2009 and compensate them with any lost wages and benefits resulting from the company’s unlawful actions against them, with interest. The decision represents an important victory for workers at the Blackstone Hotel, who have been battling the Hotel for more than a year to bring workers back to work and win a first contract.

Among the other significant rulings in this case, the judge also ordered the company to restore its 2008-2009 health insurance plan and compensate Blackstone employees for unlawful increases to health plan costs. The Hotel was also ordered to stop refusing to bargain with the Union on health plan coverage and layoffs.

Based on documents turned over by the Blackstone, the Union estimates that these lost earnings and increased benefit costs already total at least $250,000, and this amount is growing every day.

Community leaders have long criticized the owners and management of the Blackstone Hotel for their systematic efforts to dismantle the union, despite the hotel having received $72.9 million in taxpayer subsidies and credits ($40 million of which are tax credits meant to spur low income community development). As part of the ruling, the judge found that a Blackstone manager broke federal law by illegally encouraging and passing around a Union decertification petition. The judge’s decision reinforces an earlier decision issued by an NLRB Regional Director on Mar. 27, 2009, finding that the Hotel illegally encouraged and assisted some employees in circulating the decertification petition.

LaMar Johnson was one of the 14 workers laid off from the room service department. “I got married just 6 months before I was laid off from the Blackstone Hotel, and this last year has been a real struggle for me and my family. I haven’t even been able to buy a new pair of shoes. I’m gratified to know that the judge in this case sided with us and found that the hotel had broken the law. It feels like someone is actually looking out for the little guy.”

Workers at the Blackstone began organizing shortly after the hotel reopened in the summer of 2008, and the Union became officially recognized in December 2008. Workers began bargaining their first contract at the hotel shortly thereafter, and have been negotiating their first contract since.

“At every step, the Blackstone Hotel has skirted the law, waging a vicious and illegal anti-union campaign in an attempt to decertify the union and impede the collective bargaining process,” said UNITE HERE Local 1 President Henry Tamarin. “Now the Hotel wants to skirt the judge’s decision and their moral responsibility to these workers, by appealing this case and refusing to grant these workers what is rightfully owed to them.”

The Judge’s orders are directed to Sage Hospitality and Chicago Master Lessee, LLC. Prudential Insurance Company has an investor member interest in Chicago Master Lessee, LLC. The company has appealed the judge’s decision. Workers from the Blackstone Hotel and other union supporters gathered in front of the hotel on Thursday morning to call on the hotel to drop the appeal and immediately remedy the situation by bringing laid off workers back to work with compensation.

UNITE HERE Local 1, Chicago’s hospitality workers union, represents over 15,000 workers in the Chicago area.
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Chicago, IL—Today, strikers at the Congress Hotel, joined by hundreds of community supporters and members of UNITE HERE Local 1, rallied outside the Congress Hotel to commemorate the 7th Anniversary of the Congress Hotel Strike, now the longest hotel strike in American history.

The event, led by keynote speaker Congressman Luis Gutierrez, gave recognition to the strikers who are immigrants to the United States and honored them for their struggle to lift job standards for all workers in the Chicago hospitality industry. In so doing, strike supporters at the rally called both for an end to the strike at the Congress Hotel and immigration reform in the United States.

An overwhelming majority of the courageous individuals who have led the longest hotel strike in American history at the Congress Hotel are immigrants to the United States. 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 $14.60 an hour today. The strikers at the Congress Hotel stand as a powerful example of how immigrant workers in the United States are leading the fight to raise standards for low-wage workers in the service industry and beyond.

“The United States was built by immigrants, who came here and fought to make jobs in this country better,” said Henry Tamarin, the President of UNITE HERE Local 1—the union of hospitality workers in Chicago. “The Congress Hotel strikers continue that tradition today.”

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. To ensure that hotel jobs in this city are strong, family-sustaining jobs, Congress strikers have taken the fight to the streets of Chicago, New York, the Philippines, and around the world. There are about 60 active remaining strikers, who both actively picket the Congress hotel and lead campaign statewide to bring an end to the Congress Hotel Strike.

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.

“It’s been hard over the last few years, but I’m doing this for my kids—and for all the other hotel workers with families in this city. I want to leave things better for those who come after me,” said Dolores Contreras, a single mother of three and a striker who worked at the Congress Hotel as a banquet server before the strike began.

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