Hyatt workers on strike — Take action now!

This week, thousands of Hyatt hotel workers in four cities nationwide–Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Honolulu—are on strike.  They are on strike not only to win a fair contract at their own hotels, but to take a stand against Hyatt’s abuse of hotel workers in cities across the country.

  • Tell Hyatt to stop abusing workers!
  • Join a picket line in the cities where workers are on strike
  • Send a message of solidarity to Hyatt workers
  • Boycott these Hyatt Hotels
  • Hyatt has abused its housekeepers, replacing career housekeepers with minimum wage temporary workers and imposing dangerous workloads on those housekeepers who remain.  Take for example Boston, where 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.

    The people who clean, staff and help make Hyatt Hotels successful are simply seeking protections on the job.

    We heard from

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    Central Indiana JwJ supports Hyatt workers in civil disobedience action as part of nationwide protests

    Indianapolis Civil Disobedience for Hotel Workers Rising Campaign at the HyattFor the first time in Indianapolis’s recent history, 43 participants staged a mass civil disobedience in front of the Hyatt Regency downtown.  Hospitality workers and community supporters of the hotel workers were there to stand up for the Hyatt workers who have been asking management to stay neutral since November of 2008.  Among the 43 were two JwJ staff members, seven steering committee members and many other JwJ pledge signers.

    On June 16, reports surfaced that the Hyatt had plans to sell the Hyatt  Regency in Indianapolis, adding to the uncertainty that Hyatt workers in Indianapolis already face.  Over the past decade, taxpayers in Indianapolis have invested $1 billion into the development of the local hospitality industry.  The hotel and convention industry in Indianapolis is booming yet at the Hyatt Indianapolis, a non-union hotel, subcontracting of jobs is rampant, hours have been reduced in recent months, and workers earn some of the lowest wages of any Hyatt workers in North America.  Housekeepers at the Hyatt Indianapolis, clean

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    JwJ San Francisco Sits Down to Support Hotel Workers Rising

    JwJ San Francisco Participates in Civil Disobedience supporting Hyatt WorkersMembers of Jobs with Justice San Francisco turned out in force to support UNITE HERE Local 2 hotel and restaurant workers as they took to the streets to demand a fair contract on July 22.  Prior to the rally at Local 2 Plaza in downtown San Francisco, community activists, clergy, and union members packed a civil disobedience training session at Local 2 headquarters.  There they reviewed plans to close the street in front of the Grand Hyatt in Union Square.

    An hour later, as tourists stared in amazement and snapped photos, fifteen hundred people marched through the streets and converged on the Grand Hyatt, cheering and chanting in several languages in support of the hotel and restaurant workers.  The boisterous crowd reflected the diversity of San Francisco as youth from POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights), PODER (People Organizing to demand Environmental and Economic Rights), Chinese Progressive Association and Young Workers United joined teachers, nurses, clergy, teamsters, longshoremen, many other union members and elected city officials to

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    Tacoma Council Challenges Marriott-Hollander to Benefit the Community

    In a big policy shift, the Tacoma, WA City Council questioned subsidies for a Hollander-Marriott luxury project that may not benefit the community, bucking developer lobbyists and the City Manager.  For weeks, City Council-members led by Connie Ladenburg held off indemnifying Hollander and sticking taxpayers with toxic liability at the privately owned site.  The hotel is sited for the Thea Foss Waterway next to the bankrupted and nearly empty luxury Esplanade condos, also government subsidized and built on the backs of low-wage workers.

    The shift occurred while Urban Grace Church organized for a recent candidate forum on Responsible Development and amidst a now three-year JwJ free speech campaign to press the City Council to embrace justice values linked to the City’s luxury subsidy policy.  Now six candidates are referring to “sustainable development” in two Tacoma Weekly articles although not all seemed to include economic justice in the term.  Some candidates prefer Bush trickle-down welfare that doesn’t address poverty-wage jobs, a root cause of environmental unsustainability.  In their minds, low-wage downtown hotel workers should just commute to homes in affordable places like Sumner.

    By taking time to publicly evaluate the Hollander-Marriott project, Council-members catapulted the

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