Hyatt (still) should be ashamed: A Blog by Marc Gunther

Business for Social Responsibility (“The Business of a Better World”) does valuable work with business around social and environmental issues. It’s helped organize efforts to get global companies to take responsibility for the rights of workers in their supply chains, particularly in poor countries.

 So what will BSR do about its 2009 conference, the premiere event on the corporate-responsibility circuit, now scheduled for the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero in San Francisco?

You’ve heard about Hyatt’s labor problems by now, haven’t you? Last month, Hyatt laid off 98 housekeepers at three Boston hotels, replacing them with lower-paid workers from an outsourcing firm called Hospitality Staffing Solutions of Georgia, which provides 4,500 workers to hotels in more than 30 cities.

The Hyatt workers were paid $14 to $16 an hour, according to The Times, while the replacements will make $8 an hour. Workers who lost their jobs say they were told to train their replacements for “vacation relief,” then abruptly informed that they were being canned. Hyatt denies that it misled anyone.

According to The Boston Globe, which broke the news:

After hearing the news at meetings last month, employees cried and screamed, said Drupattie Jungra, 55, who had worked at the Cambridge Hyatt for more than 21 years and made $15.69 an hour, plus benefits.

“Where am I going to go look for a job?’’ said Jungra, a widow who regularly sends money to her family in Guyana and whose four grown sons live with her.

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