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

[dda.livejournal.com]

Surely top management could have cut their own pay (or everyone's pay) by a tiny amount to save an equivalent amount of money.

Perhaps so (again, I don't have access to their financial data so I can't say for sure) but I can imagine how I would feel if I was told I was getting a pay cut because Hyatt's in another city weren't profitable.

Laying people off may be 'defensible', but doing so in order to replace the laid-off people with lower-wage workers doing the same work?

I see. I can only assume you are similarly outraged about every company that has done this with either software developers or customer support people (or both). Pretty much every phone company and most computer companies (Apple being an exception) that I've dealt with have their first-line tech support in another country; I am guessing they laid off people here in order to do that.

Has this not been your experience?

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

I can only assume you are similarly outraged about every company that has done this with either software developers or customer support people (or both).

He very well might be outraged about that.

However, this comment "Well, are you pissed about this OTHER outrage" is classic derailing.

Mind you, I heard nothing complaining about my company outsourcing my entire department after a merger.

[dda.livejournal.com]

However, this comment "Well, are you pissed about this OTHER outrage" is classic derailing.

No, it is asking if he is being consistent; if he's not upset about the same thing happening elsewhere then there is more to this an the stated objections. If he boycotts the Hyatt but doesn't boycott other companies that have done the same thing then he's being inconsistent. He claims the action is indefensible which says to me that it is similarly indefensible when Dell or Sprint or Comcast does it; since it cannot be defended there, either, the same actions should be taken to counter it.

If, as one poster suggested, this outsourcing results in a higher incident of theft by housekeeping staff, it could be suggested that supporting the former employees, and a union supporting them, supports the safety of Arisia's membership.

If there is a higher incidence of theft at Arisia '10 then I strong agree that the Hyatt should be contacted and, if one desires, one can support the former employees and/or a union. But if there is only the suggestion that it might do so, I can just as easily make the suggestion that it will make the new workers that much more eager to keep their jobs and so will lower theft and so Arisia should support this.

Both are just suggestions, after all.

[ron_newman]

I'm not a customer of Dell or Sprint or Comcast. I am a customer of Hyatt, by way of being an Arisia attendee. And this is the Arisia LJ community, which is why I brought the topic up here.