Rabbis step up pressure on Hyatt
By Elise Kigner / THE JEWISH ADVOCATE [Greater Boston, MA] Staff / July 6, 2011
Roused by the firing of 98 Hyatt workers in the Boston two years ago, a group of Jewish clergy from around the country has issued a report assailing labor practices at the hotel chain.
The report spotlights Hyatt's treatment of its housekeepers, calling attention to its increased use of subcontractors that pay lower wages and offer fewer benefits.
It goes so far as to deem the hotel chain as being not kosher because of its labor practices.
The report begins by describing the events of August 31, 2009, when all 98 housekeepers at the Hyatt's three Boston-area hotels were fired in one day. These housekeepers were replaced by lower-paid, subcontracted staff, many of whom they had trained themselves.
In the report, the clergy acknowledge that they had been remiss in the past for not paying attention to the welfare of workers like the housekeepers.
"It is part of the purpose of this report to challenge the complacency that we and the mainstream religious community have previously exhibited to these business practices, to identify these practice as oshek/oppression, and to propose steps that we, as people of faith, can do to stand in solidarity with workers," the report states.
The report, which was released last week, includes excerpts from interviews with Hyatt housekeepers conducted by 15 Jewish community members, including rabbis and cantors. Six non-Jewish spiritual leaders also conducted interviews. The report was a joint project of the clergy and the Unite Here labor union, said Marya Axner, regional director of the New England Jewish Labor Committee.
After the Boston firings, Rabbi Barbara Penzner and the New England Jewish Labor Committee launched a boycott of the Boston-area Hyatt hotels, which was endorsed by 300 rabbis and the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
Beyond calling on the Hyatt to rehire the Boston area housekeepers it fired, the report calls for national changes at the Hyatt, such as accepting a fair process to allow workers to unionize and paying workers a living wage with benefits.
The report states that Hyatt has been gradually subcontracting out housekeeping jobs around the country, including at hotels in Indianapolis and San Antonio.
In Boston, Axner and Penzner, spiritual leader of Temple Hillel B'nai Torah in West Roxbury, interviewed some of the former Hyatt housekeepers. Axner had first met these women when they spent several hours in jail together after protesting the Hyatt.
One excerpt from an interview with a Boston worker reads, "I gave my strength, my honesty and my youth to that job for 20 years and this is how Hyatt pays us. Everything we have, we put there. Hyatt should be ashamed of what they did to us."
The report is available at www.justiceathyatt.org .
In response to the report, Farley Kern, Hyatt's vice president of corporate communications, sent a statement that criticizes the report for containing inaccurate information supplied by Unite Here.
The statement also downplays the interviews with housekeepers.
"We certainly regret that certain members of the clergy would draw conclusions about our company based on conversations with a small number of the more than 85,000 associates who work in Hyatt hotels around the world," it reads.
Putting Jewish texts to practice, the report deems Hyatt lo kasher (not kosher).
In the report is a poem by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb about a Hasidic leader, Levi Yitzhak from Berdichev, who declares all the matzah made in the town factory traif.
In the poem he says: ""˜Do you not see the young girls/ who work for pennies/ forced to bake/ from dusk to dawn/ so you can feast/ while they go hungry/ never mind the lonely dark miles to and from home./ Not Kosher!'"
Axner said kosher is "a standard of looking at something as sacred."
While kosher standards are typically applied to food and the treatment of animals, Axner said, "Shouldn't we treat humans in the services also at certain standards that are clearly outlined in the Jewish texts that we have?"
Penzner said the report would be sent to rabbis throughout the country.
In the past two years, she said, such organizations as the National Organization of Women, the National Association of Jewish Chaplains, and Spiritual Directors International have moved conferences from the Hyatt to other locations.