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Hyatt Hotels is facing a wave of anger and protests as a result of its decision to lay off 98 members of its housekeeping staff at three Boston area hotels and replace them with lower paid workers.
Upset by the layoffs, Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts has called on state employees to boycott Hyatt hotels unless the company reinstates the workers.
In a letter sent Wednesday to Hyatt’s chief executive, Mr. Patrick called what happened “the worst nightmare of every worker in today’s weak economy.”
He added, “Surely there is some way to retain the jobs for your housekeeping staff, as other hotels have done, and to work with them to help the company meet its current challenges, rather than tossing them out unceremoniously to fend for themselves while the people they trained take their jobs at barely livable wages.”
The housekeepers generally earned $14 to $16 an hour with health benefits, while their replacements, union and Hyatt officials say, are being paid around $8 an hour without health benefits. Hyatt said it was “very disappointed” by Mr. Patrick’s boycott threat, saying it endangers the jobs of 600 Hyatt employees in the Boston area.
“The difficult decision to outsource the housekeeping function at our Boston properties was made in response to the unprecedented economic challenges those hotels are facing in the current business environment,” Hyatt said in a statement. “A precipitous drop in revenues at our Boston hotels has made major cost-cutting measures necessary.”
The company laid off its housekeeping staff at the Hyatt Regency Boston, Hyatt Regency Cambridge and Hyatt Harborside at Logan International Airport. Hyatt subcontracted the housekeeping work to Hospitality Staffing Solutions of Georgia, which says it provides 4,500 workers to hotels in more than 30 cities.
Lucine Williams, who had worked at the Hyatt Regency Boston for 22 years, said that when management told the workers they were being laid off late on Aug. 31, they were told that was their last day.
“Everyone was shocked,” she said. “A lot of people were crying.”
Ms. Williams also said management had told the housekeepers to train the Staffing Solutions workers because those workers might fill in for them when they were on vacation or out sick.
Serandou Kamara, a refugee from Sierra Leone who worked at the Hyatt Harborside for five years, said that several days before the layoffs, management told the housekeepers to empty their lockers because the lockers were going to be cleaned.
“They kick us out without notice on our last day of work,” Ms. Kamara said. “The way they treat us was like animals.”
Hyatt executives called accusations that its employees were deceived “absolutely false” and said “the hotels in Boston have treated their housekeepers with fairness and dignity.”
The company has extended the laid-off workers’ health benefits to the end of the year and has set up a task force to help them in other ways.
Although the three Boston-area Hyatts are nonunion, the hotel workers’ union Unite Here has become involved in the dispute, saying several laid-off workers had asked it for help.
To step up pressure on Hyatt, the union arranged for a laid-off housekeeper, Angela Norena, to fly to Chicago on Thursday and appeal to Penny Pritzker, who was national finance chairman of President Obama’s campaign last year and whose family is Hyatt’s principal owner.
More than 150 hotel workers and their supporters were arrested on Thursday afternoon in front of the Park Hyatt in Chicago as they demonstrated in support of the workers in Boston.
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