Mayor Menino loved and understood 
working class people. He improved the lot for generations of Boston hotel and food service workers. He will always be remembered as a hero by the members of Local 26. We will miss him. Our thoughts and prayers are with Angela and the entire Menino family.
–Brian Lang, President UNITE HERE Local 26 and the Local 26 family
Thank you to the many Cambridge and Boston community members who marched, testified, boycotted and prayed with the workers of the Le Meridien Hotel as they worked to win a fair process to decide on unionization.
HEI, the owners of the Le Meridien Cambridge, agreed to a fair process in December 2013. In March of this year an independent arbitrator certified that a majority of workers at the hotel wanted the union. The Hotel recognized the workers’ union and began bargaining with them for a contract.
On September 12 the Le Meridien workers unanimously ratified their first union contract. The contract includes gains to wages, reductions in employee health care costs and it will give workers more control over their schedules and a grievance process for addressing concerns which arise.
“We are committed to working with city leaders of Cambridge to ensure that all workers within its limits can enjoy a fair workplace,” said Local 26 President Brian Lang. “We are grateful for the help the workers received from the Cambridge community.”
The contract will bring wages and benefits of Le Meridien workers to the full Local 26 standard that is enjoyed by workers at 28 other hotels in Boston and Cambridge.
Workers cheered for the new contract. The wage increases are substantial and the cost of health insurance will be dramatically reduced. Workers currently pay 40% of their plan’s cost and will soon have family insurance for as little as $12 a week.
“Our health insurance has been so expensive, it has been hard to pay my other bills for a long time,” said housekeeper of 16 years Rosa de la Rosa. “With the raises and decrease in cost in our insurance, I will have more resources for my daughter. I know she’ll have a better future.”
Thank you again for your support in helping the Le Meridien Cambridge workers gain respect and dignity at their workplace.
One-hundred food service workers for Sodexo at Emerson College have joined UNITE HERE Local 26 following an overwhelming vote in favor of unionization. Workers first presented a petition to management in April of this year, with strong backing from the campus community in which they asked for a fair process to determine union representation. Twenty-five student groups organized in support the food service workers’ organizing while the Emerson College Faculty Assembly voted unanimously to support.
The new Local 26 members look forward to collectively bargaining their first union contract. Organizing committee member and baker Donna Papastavrou said, “The work we do to feed the campus helps make Emerson strong. We are proud to be part of this community and to have stood together to win respect and a voice on the job.”
The Emerson workers join food service workers at ten other Boston area colleges and universities in Local 26 including Harvard, MIT, and Northeastern University.
THE ABRUPT termination of 98 housekeepers at three Boston-area Hyatt hotels five years ago was a crude attempt to cut costs, but the decision also ended up sullying the hotels’ image. Hyatt Hotels Corp. finally moved to clean up that mess last week by agreeing to pay $1 million to the fired housekeepers and offering them hiring preference at future Hyatt-operated hotels. This peace offering, no doubt, can be seen in light of the company’s desire to operate a 1,000-room hotel at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in South Boston. Yet the agreement also contains a moral for bean counters: Gaining a reputation for mistreating workers carries its own cost.
Like other business sectors coping with the economic tailspin of 2009, the hospitality industry sought to reduce expenses by outsourcing jobs normally performed by staff employees. But Hyatt’s decision to bring in replacement housekeepers at roughly half the hourly wage appalled many outside observers — especially after the fired housekeepers reported that they had been duped by the hotel into training their replacements. (The company denied deceiving employees.)
It wouldn’t take long before local clergy, led by Rabbi Barbara Penzner of Temple Hillel B’nai Torah in West Roxbury, mobilized congregants and parishioners to support a boycott of the Hyatt Regency Boston, Hyatt Boston Harbor, and Hyatt Regency Cambridge. The fired housekeepers didn’t belong to a union. But they knew enough to seek help from Unite Here Local 26, which represents the area’s unionized hospitality workers. The savvy union kept the issue of the “Hyatt 100” in front of members of the public who felt increasingly worried about their own job security. Governor Patrick even threatened that state workers on official business would shun the Hyatt properties.
Local 26 estimates that the subsequent boycott cost the hotel chain about $6 million. But the greatest effect of the five-year-long campaign may have been in deterring other hotel companies from emulating Hyatt. If not for the courage of the Hyatt housekeepers to stand up for themselves, Boston might have seen a “wave” of similar firings, according to Local 26 president Brian Lang. Instead, executives at other nonunion hotels couldn’t help but take notice that they, too, would pay a steep price for treating employees unfairly.
Strictly speaking, the new agreement was voluntary; Hyatt was under no legal obligation to pay out anything, never mind $1 million to be split among the fired workers. Yet beyond any plans they may have for a convention center hotel, Hyatt executives also know that the agreement is sure to improve relationships with the labor-friendly administration of Boston Mayor Martin Walsh. There are lessons here for all sides: The episode is a cautionary tale for employers who treat employees as an easily replaceable commodity. And it’s a reminder to workers and consumers that they can affect a company’s conduct by speaking up.
Several employees of the Boston-Cambridge DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel and members of the Student Labor Action Movement set up a bed-making demonstration in the Science Center Plaza Monday afternoon, continuing their year-and-a-half long efforts to support worker unionization at the hotel.
The demonstration built upon a campaign that began after a majority of workers at the hotel signed a petition in March 2013 to launch the process of deciding whether to join UNITE HERE! Local 26, a Massachusetts-based union that represents Harvard’s dining hall employees.
Since then, the workers have staged numerous protests, including a June rally that drew hundreds of protesters. The workers hope that Hilton will be more receptive to their preferred means of unionization if Harvard pressures the company. The hotel is not operated by the University but is located in a Harvard-owned building.
At the demonstration, SLAM members and workers elicited passersby to make a queen-sized bed, which was placed in the center of the plaza. Other SLAM members handed out fliers to raise awareness about working conditions at the hotel.
“We’re trying to show that we think of making beds as an easy chore, but it’s not,” SLAM member Rachel J. Sandalow-Ash ’15 said. “Workers at the Doubletree have to clean twice as many beds as workers in unionized hotels in Boston. They are expected to do an unreasonable amount of work in a short amount of time.”
The DoubleTree workers have received broad support from the community in the past, with endorsements from the Undergraduate Council and Cambridge City Council. Sandalow-Ash said this event was meant to raise awareness among freshmen.
Jessica L. Jin ’18 and Jackson H. Allen ’18 stopped by the Science Center demonstration to make the bed on their way from lunch in Annenberg, wrestling pillows into cases and laying sheets on the bed.
“We have free time, and it looked interesting,” Jin said. “It was stressful, and it’s more physically strenuous than you would imagine.”
Veteran DoubleTree worker Emma Perdomo gave the students pointers as they worked, while SLAM members cheered them on. When the bed was made, Perdomo gave them a grade: a B-minus.
“It was interesting to learn what [the campaign] is all about,” Allen said. “Harvard has a responsibility to make sure that all the businesses and stuff that they own should treat their workers fairly and should pay them for all hard work that they do, as we saw.”
Harvard has maintained its position that the issue should be resolved between Hilton and its employees, according to a July letter from Kevin Casey, Harvard’s associate vice president for public affairs and communication, to the DoubleTree management.
Company officials do not believe that a true majority of DoubleTree workers wish to be represented by any union for the purposes of collective bargaining, according to comments from a Hilton Worldwide spokesperson last April. Still, DoubleTree workers and students remain persistent in their activism.
“We want to show how hard the housekeeping is,” Perdomo said. “We just are fighting, and we can’t stop because we want labor security and job security. Harvard needs to listen to the housekeepers of the DoubleTree hotel.”