Sit down

Hotel workers target Park Hyatt as contract talks continue

09/30/2009 10:00 PM

By IAN FULLERTON
Contributing Reporter

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Protesters line up to be arrested for blocking traffic; all 200 who sat down on Chicago Ave. were arrested. It took police approximately an hour to remove the demonstrators from the street.

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As downtown workers scrambled through rush hour traffic to get home last Thursday, riled-up hotel workers and their supporters from across the city and country got comfortable in front of the Park Hyatt Chicago hotel.

“I used to feel that our managers treated us with respect,” said Susan Tynan, a 39-year-old server at the Park Hyatt. “But lately … they’ve had the attitude that we’re lucky to have a job.”

Dressed in her hotel uniform, Tynan was among the 200 protesters who linked arms and sat down on Chicago Avenue in front of the hotel, blocking traffic between Rush and Michigan.

Demonstrators, adorned in shirts that read “I Am Not Afraid,” had marched from the nearby Water Tower Place, chanting “Si se puede, yes we can,” and cheered as a passing fire truck gave a supportive round of honks.

All 200 who participated in the organized sit-in were arrested. Officers waited about fifteen minutes before arresting the cooperative protesters; it took nearly an hour to clear the street.

Tynan, newly married, said she is afraid of losing her current healthcare coverage as her employer retrenches.

“That’s what I don’t want to have happen,” she said.


While directed specifically at managers of the Hyatt chain in response to staffing cutbacks in Chicago and other cities, last week’s sit-in was also something of a shot over the bow in ongoing contract talks between Unite Here Local 1 and Chicago’s hotel industry.

Unite Here, which represents housekeepers, bell staff, restaurant and other workers at 30 unionized hotels in Chicago, is currently negotiating a new contract with the hotels, which include firms like Hyatt, Hilton Hotels and Starwood Hotels & Resorts, the three major operators in the country’s hospitality industry.

There are 17 hotels with a unionized workforce on the Near North Side, the Ambassador East, the Drake, Hotel Amalfi and the Sheraton among them.

The previous labor agreement between Local 1 and the hotels expired on August 31.

Without revealing specifics, union reps have claimed that the negotiations, which cover approximately 6,500 workers downtown, have been difficult thus far.

Negotiators on the hotel side said they are feeling the impact of the recession.

“We’re reeling in the same way that every business in the United States is right now,” said John Schafer, vice president of the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

Schafer noted that hotels across Chicago had seen a drop in occupancy of 500,000 visitors in the last year, lessening the demand for employees.

“This isn’t something we thought up,” said Schafer, “this is something we’re reacting to.”

Schafer said Hyatt was only looking to control costs.

“We want people to have benefits,” he said, “We just have to say that it can’t increase at the meteoric rates that it has over the past six years.”

While the hotels have cited the tumbling economy as cause for the ultimatums on staffing and healthcare, the union is firing back with statistics stating that the hotel industry has not had a down year since 1991.

“We feel that it is disingenuous for these companies to blame the economy while they try to take away healthcare and roll back staffing and wages,” said union spokewoman Annemarie Strassel.

Strassel claimed that the hotels have squeezed workers to their advantage, pointing to the $200 billion in profits made by the hotel industry as a whole over the last decade.

Wages for hotel workers under the union contract have risen from $8.83 to $14.60 since 2002.

Though the current city-wide contract has already expired, Strassel said the union would continue to consider striking as a last resort.

If union members did move to a work stoppage, both sides would be playing with a good hand, according to Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employment relations at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Given the media attention generated by Thursday’s demonstration, Unite Here could easily muster additional public, political and clergy support before launching a strike, he said.

And with city elections and the Olympic bid on the horizon, stakeholders in Chicago may not be look kindly on the hotels’ management if citywide strikes did occur.

“[Local 1] could successfully shut those hotels down and do some financial damage,” said Bruno. He noted that some of the country’s highest strike numbers came during the Depression.

But the three hotels operators have significant leverage as well.

“These companies have the financial clout to stand up to workers,” he said. “Their actions will set patterns.”


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