Working In These Times
Around Country, UNITE-HERE Actions Take on Hotel Giant
UNITE-HERE protesters block traffic in downtown Chicago on July 22, 2010. (Photo by Timna Axel)
Many labor movement observers have lamented the movement's dismal state throughout the past several decades—and rightly so, much of the time. But a series of coordinated civil disobediences on Thursday reminds us that some segments of the movement aren't dead yet. They're alive and kicking—hard.
Arrests from coast to coast
The hospitality workers union UNITE HERE coordinated civil disobediences around the U.S. and Canada yesterday against Hyatt Hotels, claiming nearly 1,000 people might be arrested. The union says Hyatt and its billionaire owners are using the economic downturn to squeeze workers into a "permanent recession," despite a rebound in the industry. In 15 cities—many of which rarely see mass protests or civil disobedience—workers and their supporters hit the streets to express displeasure with the company.
In Chicago, about two dozen were arrested in front of the downtown Hyatt Regency. (David Moberg offers a detailed account of that action here.) In San Francisco, 152 were arrested. Vancouver saw a rally of over 600. Sixty-three were cuffed in West Hollywood. Long Beach, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and several other cities also saw actions. All made frequent mention of Hyatt's owning family, the Pritzkers.
The best of times, the worst of times
The Pritzkers, one of the richest and most politically-connected families in the country, have rode out the recession fairly well. The billionaire Hyatt ownership family took the hotel chain public last year, cashing out over $900 million in shares, and watched the stock's value skyrocket over six months.
Penny Pritzker, the most powerful member of the family, wrapped up her tenure as National Finance Chair for President Obama in early 2009, and now serves the President's Economic Advisory Board evaluating policy for the commander-in-chief -- while remaining a board member and chair of several companies, including the Hyatt, an airport parking company, and a credit check company. The economic crisis remains grave, but the union says the Pritzkers are doing all right.
Finances and high-profile accolades aside, however, the company's public image has taken a serious beating recently. There was the firing of almost 100 housekeepers in Boston last year, who were allegedly told they were training subs from a temp agency to cover for their vacation time, only to discover the minimum wage subs were intended to be permanent and the vacations to be unending. The story blew up around the country. (Even the business press couldn't hold back their incredulity.)
Then there was the National Labor Relations Board case Hyatt settled in San Antonio where two fired workers who engaged in union activities were offered reinstatement with thousands of dollars in back pay. (Hyatt admitted no wrongdoing.) The National Football League players union sent out a letter in May warning that it might boycott a Hyatt hotel in Indianapolis, where they say management has not respected workers' rights to organize and collective bargaining.
Anger at the company has quickly come to a boil—and UNITE HERE has kept the heat on full blast. In May, workers went on a brief wildcat walk-out (a militant move the likes of which probably has not been seen since the Republic Windows and Doors factory occupation) at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, overlooking the city's Magnificent Mile and near the site of yesterday's civil disobedience. Then San Francisco Hyatt workers went on a surprise three-day strike over lagging contract negotiations. Workers swarmed the outside of the annual Hyatt shareholders meeting in Chicago, leading Hyatt to sweat so much that they barred media from entering.
Hyatt weighs in
For its part, the hotel claims it is being treated unfairly and its business practices misrepresented. "The union has made this a social justice issue," said John Schafer, vice president and managing director for the Hyatt Regency Chicago. "It is claiming that we mistreat our employees. We don't. Our base pay is $15 an hour. Entry level, we've got a package, with benefits, of about $50,000. That doesn't sound like poverty to me."
Annemarie Strassel, spokeswoman for UNITE HERE, said those numbers reflect past struggles by union members. "Hotel workers have fought very hard to create jobs that people can support their families on," she said in response to Schafer. "Nobody's getting rich on a $14-per-hour housekeeping job."
Schafer also accused the union of employing theatrics instead of hashing out a contract. "We don't want to take anything away from anybody. Our time would be better spent sitting around a negotiating table rather than getting arrested in the street," he stated.
Bridget Stalla disagreed. A cook at the Park Hyatt Chicago, Stalla stood in her white chef's uniform and hat several feet from where she would be arrested and accused management of preventing a new contract's passage since the last one expired in 2009. "They're using the recession as an excuse to lock us into a bad contract. They're the ones that are refusing to budge at negotiations."
The union cites data they say shows that the hotel industry is "on the rebound," with projected revenues exceeding previous estimates.
Stalla took offense to statements placing responsibility for the actions on union leadership.
"I'm not being duped by anybody," she asserted. "I see at work everyday that I'm being expected to work more and more, that they're making cuts to our personnel, yet they want to keep cutting. I hope Hyatt will understand that it's not just a couple of us that feel this way, and that they'll actually sit down with us and work this out."
Based on yesterday's actions, worker/management relations don't seem to be improving. Hyatt contracts around the country will expire this year, and both sides are sure to continue slinging mud at the other.
But yesterday's actions gave a glimpse of an increasingly fed-up labor movement that is willing to take bold action against employers to protect what they feel are hard won (if incomplete) gains. If other unions were to follow suit, corporations could have a tough time containing their pissed-off workforce.
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Unfortunately, they’re also kicking their own members:
The New York Times
November 19, 2009
Some Organizers Protest Their Union’s Tactics
By Steven Greenhouse
After six years working in the laundry of a Miami hotel, Julia Rivera was thrilled when her union tapped her to become a full-time union organizer.
But her excitement soon turned to outrage.
Ms. Rivera said her supervisors at Unite Here, the hotel and restaurant workers’ union, repeatedly pressed her to reveal highly personal information, getting her to divulge that her father had sexually abused her.
Later, she said, her supervisors ordered her to recount her tale of abuse again and again to workers they were trying to unionize at Tampa International Airport, convinced that Ms. Rivera’s story would move them, making them more likely to join the union.
“I was scared not to do what they said,” said Ms. Rivera, adding that she resented being pressured to disclose intimate information and then speak about it in public. “To me, it was sick. It was horrible.”
Ms. Rivera and other current and former Unite Here organizers are speaking out against what they say is a longstanding practice in which Unite Here officials pressured subordinates to disclose sensitive personal information — for example, that their mother was an alcoholic or that they were fighting with their spouse.
More than a dozen organizers said in interviews that they had often been pressured to detail such personal anguish — sometimes under the threat of dismissal from their union positions — and that their supervisors later used the information to press them to comply with their orders.
“It’s extremely cultlike and extremely manipulative,” said Amelia Frank-Vitale, a Yale graduate and former hotel union organizer who said these practices drove her to see a therapist.
Several organizers grew incensed when they discovered that details of their history had been put into the union’s database so that supervisors could use that information to manipulate them.
“This information is extremely personal,” said Matthew Edwards, an organizer who had disclosed that he was from a broken home and was overweight when young. “It is catalogued and shared throughout the whole organizing department.”
Labor professors, as well as union leaders and members, said such practices were not at all typical of organized labor.
John W. Wilhelm, Unite Here’s president, condemned the tactics. “I have zero tolerance for inappropriate intrusions into people’s private and personal lives,” he said. “I have not personally used these techniques, and I have taken a very strong stand against them.”
Mr. Wilhelm said the practice, known as pink sheeting after the color of the paper that private details were recorded on, was rare and had never been widespread at Unite Here.
He said the organized campaign to condemn it is largely part of a propaganda effort by the Service Employees International Union.
Early this year, Unite Here split apart, with one faction merging with the service employees union, which Mr. Wilhelm accused of raiding his union and trying to take it over.
But several Unite Here organizers described high-pressure meetings where they were brought to tears as supervisors pushed them, sometimes in front of a dozen colleagues, to divulge personal information in what several organizers said was an effort to break their will and ensure their obedience.
Some said supervisors, soon after hiring them, had tricked them by disclosing a few personal details over lunch and then pressing them to reciprocate with their own secrets.
Mr. Edwards and five other organizers responsible for arranging boycotts against nonunion hotels resigned from Unite Here last summer to protest pink sheeting.
“My supervisor raised that my dad is dead and so and so, don’t you feel abandoned,” said Greg Hoffman, whose late father was a labor relations professor at Michigan State University. “It’s this weird psychoanalysis. A lot of times I thought, ‘What does this have to do with my job?’ ”
Mr. Wilhelm said that he was cracking down on what pink sheeting existed. Unite Here leaders issued new guidelines in early 2008 and again in early 2009, in theory banning the practice. But several organizers detailed numerous instances of pink sheeting in recent months despite that supposed ban.
These organizers said the question sheets were no longer pink, had been renamed “motivation sheets” and contained such questions as, “What risks or difficulties has your target undergone in her/his personal life?”
Among the information on several pink sheets was:
“Her childhood was a mess. Her mother was extremely passive aggressive. She would stop speaking to her children sometimes.”
“Has social anxiety disorder. She should have been on medication or in therapy but her parents refused.”
“Mom was not around growing up. She’s heard from her twice. Once to ask for money.”
Several organizers said supervisors wanted this information so organizers could inspire prospective union members by telling them things like, “I suffered sexual abuse or I was an alcoholic, and thanks to the union, I overcame it.”
Numerous organizers said their supervisors, having pink-sheeted them, had in turn ordered them to elicit highly personal information from workers they were seeking to unionize.
Maria, a former hotel housekeeper and former organizer in Los Angeles, said workers she had sought to unionize often grew cold toward the union because of the personal questions organizers asked them.
She said her supervisors got her to reveal that her stepfather had abused her physically and psychologically. She insisted on not disclosing her last name because of this personal information.
“I wanted to change conditions at my workplace,” Maria said. “I was ready to fight for respect for workers. But this entire thing felt like a total lack of respect. I quit the union because I felt this was psychological abuse.”
In October, four hotel union organizers — Sean Abbott-Klafter, Crystal Stermer, Lohl Berning and Tenaya Lafore — wrote an open letter to the labor movement decrying pink sheeting as an effort to obtain “emotionally vulnerable information.”
“This practice is a cynical and manipulative system of control,” they wrote. “It is a tactic designed to keep those involved in the union’s work from straying from the directives of the union leadership.”
Unite Here is one of the nation’s most aggressive organizing unions and is particularly strong in Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and New York.
Unite Here was formed in 2004, when Unite, the apparel workers union, merged with Here, the hotel employees and restaurant employees union, which Mr. Wilhelm once headed and where several organizers say pink-sheeting originated. Last January, Bruce Raynor, once the apparel workers’ president, led more than 100,000 workers to break away, form a new union and merge with the service employees.
Three of the former organizers of hotel boycotts — Mr. Edwards, Mr. Hoffman and Arlen Jones — said they were protesting pink sheeting because they found it repugnant, not because they wanted to help the service employees battle Mr. Wilhelm.
Lorena Lopez, a Unite Here lead organizer in Los Angeles who began working for the hotel employees union a decade ago, said that she never witnessed any pink sheeting and that any criticisms were “a pathetic attempt by S.E.I.U. to discredit our union.”
She said the personal stories that supervisors elicited were typically about workers not being able to afford health insurance or food for their families.
Several organizers likened pink sheeting to a practice that Cesar Chavez, former president of the United Farm Workers, used when he embraced a mind-control practice developed by Synanon, a drug rehabilitation center founded in Santa Monica, Calif. Union staff members were systematically subjected to intense, prolonged verbal abuse in an effort to break them down and assure loyalty.
Mr. Wilhelm’s supporters often seek to discredit critics of pink sheeting as tools of the service employees, noting that Ms. Frank-Vitale worked for that union after quitting the hotel workers union, and that Ms. Rivera now works for Workers United, the union that split from Unite Here.
Ms. Frank-Vitale, now a graduate student at American University, says she is still haunted by memories of pink sheeting.
“One night my supervisor pushed me and pushed me, and I started talking about being an overweight woman in America, what that was like in high school, that it was very difficult for me,” she said. “I felt kind of violated.”
She said she was not protesting pink sheeting to help a particular side in a partisan battle. “I don’t care if this union splits or stays together,” she said. “I care about stopping this creepy, cultlike form of organizing.”
Companies please don’t take advantage of recession blues to terminate or make a massive lay off. I know what you had been through but I think this is not right to lay off workers if the company doesn’t have any justifiable reasons. Please don’t let your workers suffer. Follow some ethical conduct because unless you observe a ethically right decision, that’s the only time that they will stop making protest or any civil disobedience act to show that they are dismayed the way you terminate them.