Protesting Hyatt’s hypocrisy

LONG BEACH, Calif.--About 50 hotel workers and their supporters picketed the Hyatt Regency Long Beach on May 13 to demand union recognition. UNITE HERE Local 11 organized the picket and press conference.

While hotel workers at other Hyatt Global Corporation-owned hotels, including the Andaz West Hollywood and the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, are unionized, the Hyatt Regency Long Beach management refuses to negotiate with hotel workers. The problem, as many see it, is that contracts are made with individual hotels and not with the corporate entities that own them.

A Los Angeles AFL-CIO press release describing the working conditions at non-unionized hotels is startling:

In unionized hotel industry, housekeepers are typically required to clean 12-16 rooms per day. Hyatt Long Beach, however, requires housekeepers to clean 22-30 rooms a day. In order to meet this standard, some employees are forced to start work before they clock in, and work straight through their shifts without taking breaks.

"They demanded so much from us that in order to keep up, I couldn't stop working, even for a minute," said Celia Alvarez, a room attendant at the Long Beach Hyatt, who is quoted in the press release. "The pressure was so enormous that if I took my rest breaks I wouldn't be able to complete the room quota Hyatt requires."

Hotel workers received a strong show of support from the LGBT community. Hyatt has come under fire from pro-gay marriage forces after it was discovered that Doug Manchester, owner of the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, personally donated $125,000 to anti-gay Proposition 8. Activists are boycotting his hotels.

Manchester's donation to help ban same-sex marriage exposes the hypocrisy of Hyatt's multimillion-dollar marketing efforts to appear as a LGBT-friendly corporation. Protesters linked the two issues in one the banners at the picket: "Hyatt: Anti-Worker Anti-Gay."