Park Hyatt strikers decry outsourcing; hotel turns on heaters

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:36:00 -0500

The main entrance of an upscale hotel in downtown Chicago was sweltering Thursday morning — and not just because of the rising sun and the week’s heat wave. As pickets marched under the Park Hyatt’s glass awning, the inn switched on 10 heat lamps installed to warm guests in the dead of winter.

The picketing began a daylong strike in which dozens of Park Hyatt employees walked off their jobs at 7 a.m.

Their union, UNITE HERE, is trying to put pressure on Hyatt Hotels Corp. during negotiations to replace Chicago-area contracts that expired almost two years ago. The union represents about 1,800 workers at the Park Hyatt, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Hyatt Regency McCormick Place and Hyatt Regency O’Hare.

The company has agreed to match wages and benefits spelled out in four-year contracts that UNITE HERE reached this year for Chicago employees of two other hotel chains, Hilton Worldwide and Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc.

UNITE HERE says the Hyatt negotiations are stuck on the company’s ability to outsource work to nonunion firms.

“If they replace me, it doesn’t matter how good the benefits are because I’ll be out of a job,” says Park Hyatt restaurant server Gabriel Carrasquillo, a picket captain. “I’m HIV-positive so I have a lot of medical expenses. Without these health benefits, I wouldn’t be able to have the care that I have today.”

UNITE HERE says another contentious point is Hyatt’s housekeeping workloads, which the union calls hazardous. The union funded a peer-reviewed study, published last year in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, that placed Hyatt fourth among the top five U.S. hotel chains for workplace safety.

Hyatt responded by commissioning a critique from an occupational health expert who concluded that the study’s authors “have not disrupted the conventional wisdom that housekeeping tasks are not inherently hazardous.”

Hyatt accuses UNITE HERE of holding up the Chicago talks to pressure the company to recognize the union at hotels in four other cities. “Instead of acting in the best interests of its members, the union is using them to grow its membership,” says Farley Kern, Hyatt’s vice president of corporate communications.

The strike was the fourth work stoppage to hit a Chicago-area Hyatt since May 2010. Park Hyatt’s reservations desk said the hotel’s 198 rooms were booked solid Thursday morning. Kern insisted the strike would not affect guests because managers were filling in.

The company's next bargaining session with UNITE HERE is Monday.

Union pacts with Hilton turn up heat on Starwood, Hyatt

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 22:44:00 -0600

Union contracts with Chicago-area Hilton hotels could pressure other hospitality chains to follow suit.

Members of the union UNITE HERE on Friday ratified four-year agreements covering 1,600 Chicago-area workers at the Drake, Palmer House Hilton, Chicago Hilton and Hilton O’Hare.

The deals will maintain benefits and raise wages, said UNITE HERE Local 1 spokeswoman Annemarie Strassel. Workers will continue paying $30 per month for family medical coverage with no added out-of-pocket expenses, while room-attendant pay will increase more than 12 percent to $16.40 an hour over the four years, she said.

A Hilton statement called the contracts “good for our company and good for our team members.”

The agreements make Hilton the first hotel chain in the Chicago area to settle with UNITE HERE since the union’s local contracts expired in 2009.

Hotel management consultant Ted Mandigo said the deals strengthen UNITE HERE’s hand. “Having an agreement with Hilton gives a set of negotiated terms that form a basis for what [the union] is going to look for from Starwood and the Hyatt organization,” he said, referring to the Chicago area’s other major unionized hotel chains.

In 2006, three-year union deals with Hilton quickly led to similar pacts with the other hotels.

Starwood negotiator Jim Franczek said he hadn’t seen the Hilton agreement and, therefore, couldn’t comment on it.

Officials of Hyatt, a Chicago-based company, didn’t immediately answer our questions Monday.

Henry Tamarin, president of Local 1, said the Hilton deals would “definitely increase pressure” on the other companies. “But we have some sharper issues with Hyatt,” Tamarin said, pointing to subcontracting and housekeeping workloads.

WBEZ | UNITE HERE

Park Hyatt strikers decry outsourcing; hotel turns on heaters

Union pacts with Hilton turn up heat on Starwood, Hyatt