A strike has been authorized by San Francisco hotel workers. More than 9000 hotel workers are represented by UNITE-Here local 2. Ninety-two point three percent of those workers voted in favor of strike authorization at 31 upscale hotels. According to the union the hotels are seeking to increase workloads by cutting shifts and combining jobs.

The hotels have also sought to shift more of the health care burden onto employees. Some of the hotel chains involved in the contract negotiations include Hyatt, Hilton, and Fairmont corporations. The next meeting scheduled between the union and the hotels is on set for November 4. The previous contract expired in August of this year. Workers previously struck hotels in San Francisco five years ago. At the time the workers were also hit with a 53-day lockout by the hotels.

via San Francisco Hotel Workers Vote to Strike | Workers Independent News.

There’s enough online about the way Hyatt’s and Hilton’s treat their workers that I don’t have to say any more. Well, okay I’ll just mention for example a Columbia-Sussex run Hilton. I just wonder if it’s just hotels in general that act this way?

From the Chicago Tribune dated September 25th, 2009

I first noticed a similar photo to this one on the AFL-CIO blog. Two hundred protesters were arrested in front of a Park Hyatt in Chicago. To me it is just a really powerful photo. Here you have all these people willing to fight, some interlocking their arms and on top of that they’re wearing shirts that read “I am not afraid.”

Once again it is the Hyatt that enters into the Hall of Shame.

Some unscrupulous “housecleaning” in Boston-area Hyatt Hotels has blown up into a giant PR mess that will require some time and gentle diplomacy to clean up. Ninety-eight housekeepers have been fired from three of the chain’s Beantown locales and replaced with workers from a staffing company, which has ignited a social-media firestorm, street demonstrations — and even a threatened government boycott from state Governor Deval Patrick.

It would seem that for Hyatt that the hotel workers were simply making too much. So they axed them and got cheaper ones. I truly hope that this gets them a ton of bad PR.

The fight against hotel corporations continue.

When the San Francisco hotel industry hits economic hard times, it means that management doesn’t make quite as much profit as the $200 billion they made over the past decade. But at the same time, they expect the workers who clean the bathrooms and make the beds to make “sacrifices” in their wages, pensions and health care benefits — which they could lose forever. “If I don’t have low-cost, high quality health care through my employer,” asked one worker, “who is going to pay for it? Will you?” Over 1,700 members of UNITE HERE Local 2 and community allies rallied in Union Square yesterday, as the union is locked in negotiations with some of the City’s largest hotel operators – including the Sterwood Corporation, Hyatt and the Blackstone Group. After a boisterous rally, the crowd marched to the Grand Hyatt and Westin St. Francis Hotels – where ninety-two were arrested for a nonviolent sit-in demanding a fair contract.

Whether its Columbia-Sussex, Hyatt, Sterwood Corporation or now the Blackstone Group, to me, they are all the same. The private equity firms like Blackstone Group appear to be the new villains on the scene however. Another incident involving private equity is the Stella D’oro workers fighting Brynwood Partners. No one appears to want to regulate these private equity firms either. I wonder if the NY AG Andrew Cuomo has ever thought of looking into the likes of Blackstone?