Hyatt Workers on Strike in Four Cities

 

Thousands of Hyatt hotel workers in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Honolulu walked out this morning, striking for a fair contract at their own hotels and to take a stand against Hyatt’s poor treatment of hotel workers in cities across the country.
You can tell Hyatt to treat workers with respect. Click here to send a letter to Hyatt management demanding that they treat housekeepers fairly and with respect. Click here to send a message of solidarity to the strikers. If you live in one of the cities where workers are on strike, you can click here to join a picket line.
Cathy Youngblood, a Hyatt housekeeper in Los Angeles, says:

I’m picketing today because I don’t mind working hard but I won’t be abused. I believe in hard work but living in pain is a different story. I have to take medication regularly because my wrists and shoulders hurt from having to lift mattresses to change the sheets. Since I started working at the Hyatt my quality of life has diminished greatly. Hyatt must stop abusing housekeepers.

UNITEHERE!, which is assisting workers who want to form a union, says Hyatt is cutting jobs, replacing experienced employees with minimum wage temporary workers and imposing dangerous workloads on the remaining housekeepers.
According to the union, housekeepers at some Hyatt hotels clean as many as 30 rooms a day, nearly double what is typically required at union hotels. This leaves room attendants as little as 15 minutes to clean a room, resulting in fewer jobs and dangerous working conditions for housekeepers.
In Boston, Hyatt fired its entire housekeeping staff at three non-union hotels, replacing women who had worked at Hyatt for decades with temporary workers earning minimum wage. Hyatt even turned heat lamps on striking workers in Chicago during a brutal heat wave this July.