Hyatt suddenly lays off housekeepers

[ron_newman]

Some of the staff we all love at the Hyatt were suddenly laid off last month -- after being asked to train their replacements:

Housekeepers lose Hyatt jobs to outsourcing

When the housekeepers at the three Hyatt hotels in the Boston area were asked to train some new workers, they said they were told the trainees would be filling in during vacations.

On Aug. 31, staffers learned the full story: None of them would be making the beds and cleaning the showers any longer. All of them were losing their jobs. The trainees, it turns out, were employees of a Georgia company, Hospitality Staffing Solutions, who were replacing them that day.

Comments

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Agreed, utterly scummy. The 2010 con cannot move -- there is just no place to go on such short notice -- but my "inside line" is working on options for 2011 and onward. (And that's all I can say, really, besides that probably *every* hotel chain is doing this. The only way they save money is by the outsourcing company's housekeepers being paid even less... so some middleman somewhere makes more. GRrrrrrr!)

[smacaski.livejournal.com]

According to the article, hotel chains such as Hilton and Marriott are *not* planning on outsourcing their housekeeping units. If there is a Hilton or Marriott in the Boston area that meets Arisia's requirements, I'd recommend a move to one of them.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Wait, weren't we just boycotting Marriott (http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/boycottmarriotthotel/) over the blame-the-victim parking-garage rape case? Sigh. Stupid hotel chains.

Maybe Arisia's hotel committee could throw around its weight as valued off-season customer to say to the Hyatt, "Gee, aside from the general scumminess of this little incident, we now have people threatening to skip our convention altogether because of it, and We Are Not Best Pleased." >:-)

[dda.livejournal.com]

We have to continue to work with the Cambridge Hyatt to put on Arisia 2010; pissing them off by "throwing our weight around" isn't going to make that any easier and might well make it significantly more difficult.

If people, as individuals, have an issue with this and will be avoiding the Hyatt as a result, they should contact Hyatt management (i.e. not the Front Desk) and make their opinions known.

[moechus.livejournal.com]

Are you sure that there's no place to go on such short notice? In this economy? I bet there's a lot of unbooked capacity out there and that a little digging would turn up some alternatives.

The real question would then be whether Arisia could get out of its contract with Hyatt (and, if not, what would be the consequences of a breach under these circumstances).

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Certainly not for 2010. The American Library Association convention is the same weekend as Arisia and every single big hotel in Boston is part of that.

Things open up for 2011 and there are contract negotiations underway.

(And per the whole hotel moving issue of a few years ago, there are a tiny number of hotels in New England that come anywhere close to having space for Arisia.)

[dda.livejournal.com]

The real question would then be whether Arisia could get out of its contract with Hyatt (and, if not, what would be the consequences of a breach under these circumstances).

My understanding is that the consequences of a breach in our contract with the Hyatt would be Arisia paying them a lot of money, canceling A'10 and Arisia getting a very bad reputation which would make it more difficult to get into any hotel in the Boston area.

Do you honestly think that another hotel is going to respond well to, "Well, we breached our contract with the Hyatt because they outsourced their housekeeping staff!"??