Workers protest as hotel closures drag on and on

A small group of hotel union workers in red-and-black T-shirts reading “Come Back Stronger” gathered outside a closed-for-construction Copley Square Hotel Thursday, asking that the hotel’s owners reopen the storied property and reinstate their jobs.

The hotel has stood at Huntington Avenue and Exeter Street since 1891, making it Boston’s second-oldest hotel in continuous operation. But it has been closed for months, for pandemic restrictions and now renovations. Its main phone line was disconnected Thursday.

Hawkins Way Capital, a Beverly Hills-based real estate company, bought the hotel in 2019. At the time, company officials said in a press release that they planned to “update and reconfigure the guest rooms and significantly improve the hotel’s common and retail areas.”

“The property is still under construction, we are working with the city to get that cleared,” Joshua Bird, general counsel for Hawkins Way Capital, said Thursday. “We are trying to open as soon as possible, as soon as we can manage.”

Bird said he did not know when employees could expect to hear about their jobs.

“We’re trying to stay as open as we can, but we really don’t have more information,” he said.

The Copley protest was part of a day of actions from hotel, casino, and food service workers across the United States and Canada organized by UNITE HERE union locals. Workers, some of whom had to work through the pandemic and others who saw their jobs vanish when lockdowns began, asked their employers to reinstate lost jobs and amenities such as room service, which have been cut in some hotels despite an increase in business over the summer and fall.