When the housekeepers at the three Hyatt hotels in the Boston area
were asked to train some new workers, they said they were told the trainees would be filling in during vacations.
On Aug. 31, staffers learned the full story: None of them would be making the beds and cleaning the showers any longer. All of them were losing their jobs. The trainees, it turns out, were employees of a Georgia company, Hospitality Staffing Solutions, who were replacing them that day.
The move to outsource the jobs of about 100 housekeeping employees at the Hyatt Regency Boston, Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and Hyatt Harborside at Logan International Airport is unusual in the hospitality industry, which counts on the housekeeping staff to help make sure hotel guests are comfortable.
“It’s unbelievable,’’ said Lucine Williams, 41, who has worked at the Hyatt Regency Boston for nearly 22 years and was making $15.32 an hour plus health, dental, and 401(k) benefits when she lost her job. “I don’t know how they can treat people like that.’’
After hearing the news at meetings last month, employees cried and screamed, said Drupattie Jungra, 55, who had worked at the Cambridge Hyatt for more than 21 years and made $15.69 an hour, plus benefits.
“Where am I going to go look for a job?’’ said Jungra, a widow who regularly sends money to her family in Guyana and whose four grown sons live with her.
Hyatt officials confirmed the layoffs at the three hotels, but declined to say whether the chain was considering similar moves in other locations across the country. “As part of an ongoing drive to address challenging economic conditions, the Hyatt hotels of Boston have restructured their housekeeping services,’’ according to a statement from the hotel. “Regrettably, the restructuring included staff reductions.’’
Like many hotels in the Boston area, the Hyatt has struggled this year, as a recession has caused people to cut down on their travel plans. Boston area hotels experienced a 21 percent drop in revenue per available room in June compared to the year before, according to PKF Hospitality Research, and 10 percent in July. Chicago-based Hyatt reported revenue fell 18 percent to $1.6 billion in the first half of this year.
Other hotels have taken a different approach to riding out the recession. Earlier this year the Liberty Hotel ended its contract with the company that provided its security and night janitorial service and replaced them with hotel workers from other departments who might have otherwise been laid off. “We would not [outsource housekeepers] because we want to tightly control the guest experience here and the cleanliness,’’ said managing director Jim Treadway.
Representatives from the Hilton and Marriott hotel chains said they have not outsourced their housekeepers and have no plans to do so.
Paul Sacco, the president of the Massachusetts Lodging Association, said he isn’t aware of any other hotels that have outsourced their cleaning staffs but wasn’t surprised by the move. “In these economic times, it just calls for unusual initiatives that maybe we wouldn’t have looked at before,’’ he said.
But Sacco pointed out that outsourcing has been going on for years at companies around the country and that not only would the move save the Hyatt money, it wouldn’t affect the hotel guests. “If you stayed at the Hyatt last night and you bumped into the housekeeper, would you notice a difference?’’
Janice Loux, the president of Unite Here Local 26, a union that represents local hotel workers, called the outsourcing a “race to the bottom.’’ The Hyatt housekeepers were not part of the union but reached out to Local 26, which is organizing a picket and rally in support of the housekeepers today at 5 p.m. at the downtown Hyatt.
“Never ever in all my years have I seen a wholesale contracting out of an entire department,’’ she said.
Loux said the new workers will make $8 an hour and receive no benefits, based on information from a Hospitality Staffing Solutions employee. Staffing firm president Rick Holliday sent out an e-mail stating his employees made competitive wages but didn’t answer further questions.
The dismissed workers received two weeks of pay when they were let go, plus one week of pay for every year they worked at the Hyatt up to five or 10 years, depending on the hotel. According to the housekeepers, two Hyatt employees from each hotel were asked to continue working, though it was unclear if they would be employed by the Hyatt or by the staffing firm.
Williams, a single mother of a 13-year-old with asthma, stocked up on medication before her insurance runs out at the end of the month. Last week, the former Hyatt Regency Boston housekeeper also had to cancel an airline ticket she’d bought the day before she was laid off to go see her father in Barbados. She hasn’t seen him since 2005, and isn’t sure when she’ll see him again.
Several hundred hotel workers and their supporters turned out yesterday for a raucous rally in front of the Hyatt Regency Boston for the 100 housekeepers who were fired by the hotel chain. Politicians called for businesses to boycott the Hyatt, and workers banged on drums, rattled detergent bottles filled with rocks, and chanted “Hyatt, shame on you’’ as they marched in front of the hotel with picket signs.
Hyatt Hotels Corp. laid off the entire housekeeping staffs at the Hyatt Regency Boston, Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and Hyatt Harborside Hotel after the morning shift had ended on Aug. 31, citing challenging economic conditions, and immediately replaced them with workers from an out-of-state staffing firm. The housekeepers had been training those very workers, from Georgia’s Hospitality Staffing Solutions, who they were told would be filling in for vacations.
US Representative Michael Capuano and state Senator Anthony Galluccio called for a boycott of Hyatt. “Maybe they should have just taken the chocolates off the pillows, I don’t know,’’ Capuano told the people assembled on Avenue de Lafayette, near Downtown Crossing. “If we let them do this, another hotel will do it, and then another business, and on and on.’’
City Councilor Maureen Feeney told the crowd that tourism is one of the largest industries in Boston, adding, “Do you know who we have to thank for that? You.’’
Mayor Thomas M. Menino did not attend the rally, but in a statement, said: “The Hyatt made a crude business decision that will have devastating effects on real people who work hard everyday. My administration stands with these workers and will continue to fight for fair wages for all of our people.’’
In a statement issued yesterday, Hyatt Hotels Corp. said, “Due to the unprecedented economic environment, the Hyatt hotels in Boston — like businesses all over America — have had to make very difficult decisions to adjust costs in response to continuing declines in revenue. Unfortunately, these decisions have affected our associates at Boston-area properties. A restructuring of our housekeeping services included staff reductions that we deeply regret.’’
Several of the fired hotel workers spoke at the rally, including Serendu Kamara, a former Hyatt Harborside employee who is pregnant and has three children at home. “I gave everything I have for them,’’ she said.
Ritz-Carlton room service waiter Jose Sanchez, dressed in a black vest and striped tie, came to the rally during his break. “I think it’s disgusting what happened here,’’ said Sanchez, a union representative at the Ritz.
“It’s the height of arrogance and corporate greed,’’ said state Senator Marc Pacheco. “The assault on the most vulnerable target is an assault on all workers.’’
The rally was part of an outpouring of support for the housekeepers – from people offering financial assistance to others saying they will be boycotting the Hyatt – which came yesterday after The Boston Globe’s front-page story about the layoffs. Ronald Hiemann, the chief executive of Seajet in Chelsea, a shipping company specializing in Asian goods, said he would no longer recommend the Hyatt to business associates in town from overseas.
“Hyatt has been crossed off the list,’’ he wrote in an e-mail. Hiemann also sent a letter to the Coalition of New England Companies for Trade, which holds a regular event at the Hyatt Regency in Newport, R.I., asking the group to book elsewhere.
Governor Deval Patrick weighed in on the abrupt firing of 100 housekeepers at the three Boston-area Hyatts, calling the Chicago-based hotel chain’s chief executive, Mark Hoplamazian, to ask him to reconsider the decision to outsource the work.
“I’m troubled by it,’’ Patrick said in a phone interview with the Globe yesterday. “I can see that there are good people who had a job one day and don’t the next and who seem to have been replaced by people who are just going to be paid a lot less. At a time when the economy doesn’t make for a lot of other options for people, it’s doubly troubling.’’
Hyatt Hotels Corp. laid off the entire housekeeping staffs at the Hyatt Regency Boston, Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and Hyatt Harborside Hotel at Logan International Airport after the morning shift had ended on Aug. 31, citing challenging economic conditions. The chain immediately replaced the housekeepers with workers from an external staffing firm. The dismissed housekeepers were making upward of $15 an hour; their replacements are reportedly earning about half that.
Hundreds of hotel workers and their supporters gathered in front of the Hyatt Regency Boston Thursday evening to protest the firings, and several politicians, including US Representative Michael Capuano, called for a boycott of the hotel chain.
Patrick did not go that far, but said he was concerned about how the firings were handled. “I asked [Hoplamazian] directly whether this was a decision he was willing to reconsider, and I asked him to help me understand his reasoning,’’ said Patrick. “It’s everybody’s worst nightmare at a time like this in the economy, that the rug is just snatched out from under them.’’
Hyatt in a statement to the Globe reiterated it was a “difficult decision’’ to outsource its housekeeping, but the company has treated the affected employees “with fairness and dignity.’’
The hotel said in Boston it has been working for more than three years with Hospitality Staffing Solutions, the Georgia firm that is now doing all of the housekeeping in Boston-area Hyatts. When the hotel eliminated its housekeeping units, about half of the housekeepers at two of the three local Hyatts were Hospitality Staffing employees, Hyatt said. Some housekeepers told the Globe they had been asked to train outside workers whom they believed were fill-ins for vacations, but those workers ended up replacing the staff.
“The transition to contract housekeeping services was not sudden and secretive,’’ the Hyatt statement said.
Hyatt also said outsourcing housekeeping was one of many cuts the chain has made to offset the sharp drop in revenue. The chain has eliminated some management positions at the Boston-area Hyatts, reduced staff in other departments, and made cuts in sales, marketing, and administrative budgets.
But the Hyatt’s decision to outsource its entire housekeeping staff appears to be unusual because housekeeping is such a vital part of the customer experience. Other hotels, including Hilton and Marriott, said they have not outsourced their housekeepers and have no plans to do so.
Hyatt said it is “confident’’ Hospitality Staffing can provide “Hyatt-quality housekeeping services.’’
Patrick said he and Hyatt chief Hoplamazian plan to speak again over the weekend or on Monday morning. “At a minimum we ought to be talking about how to make as soft a landing as possible for people,’’ Patrick said, “and he did seem to be open to that.’’
Hyatt has provided severance and other assistance to laid-off workers, including inviting them to apply for other positions at their hotels.
The state’s Rapid Response team, part of the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, met with workers from the Logan Hyatt to give them information about unemployment assistance and health insurance. The team only recently learned about the firings at the other two hotels and hopes to meet with them soon.
They had a demonstration outside the downtown Hyatt the other day, to commemorate the anniversary of the firing of 98 housekeepers at Hyatt hotels in and around Boston.
You probably didn’t hear about this because, well, there was this alleged hurricane barreling up the coast, and everybody was too busy preparing for the end of the world to consider the fate of a bunch of hard-working women who got treated a lot worse than the weathered shingles of the quaint shops on Nantucket.
Wanda Rosario was standing on the sidewalk outside the Hyatt. She suffered more than the indignity of losing her housekeeping job of 23 years there; she unwittingly trained her replacement, a woman who is being paid a lot less to do a lot more.
The demonstration was bittersweet for Rosario. She saw a lot of old friends and former coworkers.
“Some of them looked so skinny,” she said.
She attributed the weight loss to stress. Or maybe some of them aren’t spending as much on food.
Rosario has had to cut back on everything. She gave up her cellphone, which is no small thing because she’s never needed it more. After she was out of work for six months, she got a job at the Park Plaza Hotel. On the bright side, unlike the Hyatt, it’s a union shop, Local 26, and the hotel can’t just fire her on a whim. But she was number two on the seniority list at the Hyatt. She’s number 93 at the Park Plaza. It’s as if her 23 years of work history didn’t happen.
So she has to settle for irregular shifts, and she’s always on call. She’s happy to have a job, but lucky to get two shifts a week. And so she sits by the phone in her East Boston apartment, waiting, hoping for it to ring.
A few days ago, a bunch of degenerates killed a pizza deliveryman, a Dominican immigrant named Richel Nova, for a hundred bucks. Nova’s funeral will take place tomorrow in a church a few blocks from where another Dominican immigrant, Wanda Rosario, will sit by the phone, waiting for a call so she can work.
It’s funny how we look at things. Everybody looks at what was done to Richel Nova, a man’s life for a few measly bills, and agrees it was a moral obscenity. How many look at what was done to Wanda Rosario, in the name of maximizing stockholder profits, and think it’s immoral?
The bean counters didn’t kill Wanda Rosario, but they wounded her soul, they turned her life upside down. And for what? To save what for a huge corporation is the equivalent of the chump change Richel Nova was carrying in his pocket when he made his last delivery the other night in Hyde Park.
Hyatt is hardly the only company increasing stockholder profits as it cuts jobs and pay. In this, the recession that won’t end, it’s becoming the American Way. Hyatt’s stock price has jumped 50 percent since the company went public last fall. The Hyatt owners pocketed almost $1 billion with the initial public offering. Stockholders have seen their portfolios grow.
And 57-year-old Wanda Rosario, at a time when she was just starting to think about retirement, had to start over and make due with far less.
We were sitting in her apartment the other day when the phone rang and her son handed it to her. It was the Park Plaza, and she brightened because she thought it meant more work. In fact, it meant less. A scheduled shift fell through.
Wanda Rosario chuckled ruefully at the idea of celebrating Labor Day. She doesn’t even think they should call it Labor Day anymore, because American workers aren’t valued the way they used to be. We should be more honest, she says, and acknowledge whose interests dictate what happens to working families.
“They shouldn’t call it Labor Day,” Wanda Rosario said. “They should call it Stockholder Day.”