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Grand Hyatt Watch: Round One goes to Housekeepers

April 13, 2010

Employees at the Grand Hyatt San Antonio will soon find a new notice posted on backroom walls of the downtown hotel, thanks to a settlement between the hotel, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board, and the ambitious service-industry union Unite Here.

To give you a taste of the substance of the two-page flyer, it opens:

FEDERAL LAW GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO

Form, join or assist a union;
Choose representatives to bargain with us on your behalf,
Act together with other employees for your benefit and protection;
Choose not to engage in any of these protected activities.

WE WILL NOT do anything to Interfere with those rights.

That last line may represent a change in behavior for the company, which current and former employees in San Antonio and elsewhere accuse of using intimidation tactics, including firings and threats of surveillance, to keep staff from organizing for collective bargaining power.

Unite Here union member Gabriel Morales, a UTSA student of political science and philosophy who was fired by the Hyatt last September, received a $5,385 check and invitation to return to work as an in-room dining server as part of that settlement. Monday was his first day back on the job. Fellow union member and Hyatt pastry chef Greg Fox even baked him a cake (right).

Another employee who chose not to return to work bagged a $12,500 check from the Hyatt. Both payments were for back pay, according to National Labor Relations Board documents.

The NLRB took up Unite Here's case by filing a complaint against the hotel in January, alleging union intimidation, interrogations, and threats of surveillance. But before the March 22 court date arrived, in which Grand Hyatt officials were to stand before the NLRB's administrative law judge, company officials blinked, and the three parties went to work on a settlement.

Read the rest of the article.

 

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