Labor & Employment Law

UNITEHERE! Calls for Boycott of 7 Hotels

By James Parks

Fed up with their employer paying off its high debt on the backs of workers, employees of Columbia Sussex Corp. rallied around the country this week and called on customers to boycott seven hotels owned by the company.

In the past few years, workers represented by UNITEHERE! at four hotels owned by Columbia Sussex have been laid off, seen their benefits reduced and their pay frozen and been forced to pay higher health care premiums as the company scrambles to pay off more than $1 billion in debt in securities it borrowed to buy 14 hotels in 2005.

The union is calling on customers to boycott seven Columbia Sussex-owned hotels?three union and four nonunion?in support of a fair process for workers to decide for themselves whether to join a union The union hotels include the Baltimore (Md.) Sheraton City Center, Hilton Crystal City in Northern Virginia and Anchorage (Alaska) Hilton. The nonunion hotels are the Westin Washington D.C. City Center, Westin Emerald Plaza San Diego, Wyndham Chicago and Westin Chicago.

Says Mary Lee Hinant, a Baltimore Sheraton laundry worker for 34 years:

Ever since banks lent all that money to Columbia Sussex to buy my hotel, my paycheck is smaller, I don’t qualify for health insurance anymore, and my co-workers are laid off.

Columbia Sussex, which owns 67 hotels, is the fourth largest owner of full service hotels in the country. The company bought five of the boycotted hotels in 2005 as part of a package of 14 hotels, backed by $1.1 billion in securities.

Laurence Green, a 24-year cook at the Westin Washington D.C., City Center, says:

Since Columbia Sussex bought the hotel several years ago, staffing has been cut. Columbia Sussex reduced our wages by 3 percent across the board and stopped paying the match on our 401(k)s.

“I don’t know who’s to blame: Columbia Sussex, the banks, or both. But I’m tired of being squeezed every which way in their cost cutting,” says Vickie Castro, a housekeeping office clerk for 23 years at the Anchorage Hilton.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 26, 2010 (boomark / email).