BOSTON, MA, November 11 — “Hyatt says lay off, We get pissed off” chanted faculty and students from Roxbury Community College (RCC) who, along with fired Hyatt workers held a spirited picket line at the Hyatt Hotel at Logan airport. The rally was called to protest the racist firing of the entire housekeeping staff, 90% Latinas, from the three Hyatt hotels in Boston. Through signs, speakers, and chants, we connected the firing of Hyatt housekeepers and cutbacks at community colleges to the crisis of capitalism.
All summer Hyatt’s General Managers kept bringing in new housekeepers and assigning their staff to train them. The bosses told them that the new workers, hired by an out-of-state staffing company, would be filling in for them when they took vacation time and on weekends (so that they could have weekends off!). On August 31st, the Hyatt bosses informed their housekeepers that they were all being fired and replaced by the same workers they had just trained.
Many of them were overwhelmed with outrage, panic, and disbelief at such treatment. The new workers, also mainly Latinas, were hired at half the pay and with no benefits. Some, having made friends with the veteran workers, quit in solidarity.
When the workers began to protest their firings, liberal Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick tried to pacify them by brokering a deal with Hyatt: Give the workers their jobs back for one year with the same pay and benefits. The workers unanimously voted down this sellout! However, under the mis-leadership of Local 26, the Hotel Workers’ Union, they’ve been pursuing another losing strategy. They have been trying to get guests and conferences to boycott the hotels rather than use workers’ power to shut down the three Hyatts (as well as other unionized hotels in the Boston area).
A month later, Governor Patrick announced the lay-offs of 1,000 Massachusetts state workers. When he was challenged for his hypocrisy, he said, “But we’re not making them train their replacements!” To workers, it doesn’t matter if we get fired by vicious and lying Hyatt bosses, or by two-faced liberals like Gov. Patrick. We are still losing our jobs to save corporate profits. Throughout Massachusetts the firings at the Hyatt have become a symbol of the class war against workers as the financial crisis intensifies.
Most importantly, the rally helped to bring several students around PLP. Their desire to support the Hyatt workers shows that many in our class reject the individualism that is rampant under capitalism. Their participation in a CHALLENGE Reader’s Group will help them develop an understanding of capitalism and what it will take to liberate our class. Also, a PLP leaflet blaming capitalism for the mass firings at Hyatt was passed out at RCC by faculty and students from another college, building the kind of worker-student solidarity that will strengthen our Party work