Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Members of the Hyatt Regency Buffalo Workers United gathered outside the hotel in Downtown Buffalo on Wednesday to announce their organizing campaign, and recent charges that were filed against the Hyatt for their union-busting campaign attacking workers’ rights.
Hyatt Regency Buffalo workers started quietly organizing a union months ago. Since going public to management, workers have faced an intense union-busting campaign led by Hyatt and building owner Douglas Jemal.
Luke Sills is a front desk worker at the Hyatt Regency downtown, and believes the initial impetus for organizing a union was to find a way for the employees to have a voice and make the things better for workers and guests at the hotel. It's been a shock and a bit horrifying for him to see the reaction to the unionizing campaign.
"We came public at some point in August, and immediately, they pulled me into their office - our general manager Steve and the HR director Nicole - for like, 45 minutes, basically to interrogate me about what I thought I was doing getting involved in this, what I even thought a union could do for us. I was expecting them to sort of try to persuade me out of it, but by the end of that interrogation, it was clear they were trying to intimidate me," said Sills on Wednesday during a press conference at the corner of W Huron Street and Pearl Street. "They were saying things to me like, 'You're going to learn a thing or two about unions from all of this. This is going to be a very uncomfortable process for you all.' And to be honest, I think I got off easy."
Since that point, Sills says the Hyatt has threatened workers in all kinds of ways.
"More recently, in the past month, they fired, I think, eight people now from the departments that we petitioned for an election for," Sills said. "From Starbucks, they pretty much wiped out the whole department. There were nine people who worked in the Starbucks, and today, I think one of them, this is their last week, but only two people remain that were working here a month ago. And they've started doing something similar in the restaurant too."
Tiba Salvatore, who also works at the Hyatt Regency downtown, had noticed very quickly after she was hired earlier this year of the hostile and toxic work environment that management created for the workers, specifically the general manager and HR manager Sills had mentioned.
"They had talked to Luke the first day, and had pretty much given him a heads up that they were going to be very, very hostile about this whole process. They started off pretty much just ignoring all the workers that were a part of the Union Committee, the workers that signed the union letter to the managers and to the workers. They stopped making eye contact with everybody, they would not say good morning or anything like that. It does show a little bit of childishness on their part," said Salvatore on Wednesday.
Salvatore was an immigrant who came to the United States when she was 13-years-old. She says the majority of the housekeeping department at the Hyatt are immigrants from Africa, Bangladesh, and elsewhere around the world. She is particularly troubled by the way immigrant workers are being treated at the hotel.
"I have been told by so many housekeepers during my time here that the American and Hispanic housekeepers are getting maybe 8-to-10 rooms to do in one day, versus the African housekeepers are getting 28 rooms in one day, and are expected to go down and help with laundry after they're done," Salvatore noted. "Immigration fairness is something that I feel very, very strongly about, because I feel like I get treated a little bit differently because of how I look, but I'm definitely an immigrant. I was not born here, and just because I speak English doesn't mean that I am better than anybody else who works in Hyatt. And these are people that are very smarter, that are getting treated very, very unfairly throughout this process."
State Sen. Sean Ryan was also on-hand Wednesday to stand in support of the Buffalo Hyatt Workers United in their effort. He says the right to unionize is in the United States Constitution, and companies like Hyatt have no right trying to take that away from their employees.
"Sometimes corporations try to treat unionization as an anti-American activity, some sort of foreign concept. But I'll tell you this, the founding fathers have it in the Constitution, and we're here today to assert our constitutional rights. And that constitutional right says, you should be able to come together to collectively bargain. That's what's happening, and companies feel this as a threat," said Sen. Ryan during Wednesday's press conference. "We all know why they treat it as a threat, because they want to pay workers less money. That's always the bottom line."
Ryan says a unionized workforce, especially in the hospitality business, would only be a good thing for the City of Buffalo.
"There's conferences that won't come to Buffalo because there's no unionized hotels. There are corporations who will only come into the market and bring a convention here if the workers are paid a fair wage, and have representation. We don't have that. We used to have that in Buffalo, that all fell apart 30 years ago," Ryan explained. "But you drive down to Pittsburgh, hotels are unionized there, people have democracy in their workplace. You go down the Thruway and go to Albany, every hotel I stay in Albany I ask, all their workers are unionized. And they'll tell you it leads to a better workforce, it leads to people staying in their jobs longer. They dig into their jobs. But what we want, at the end of the game, is that everybody who works in our hospitality industry is paid a wage that they can live on, and support their families on. That's what's been missing.
"Strongest employers in Buffalo are union employers. Those employees are not on food stamps, they're not on Medicaid, they're not on Child Health Plus, and that's what we want [in our economy]. And I'm here today to stand with the folks behind me, but we hope it starts here and it ends up in every hotel in Western New York. It's good for our economy."
In addition, lawyers representing Buffalo Hyatt Workers United also filed an unfair labor practice charge on Tuesday, alleging the hotel violated the National Labor Relations Act in 25 different ways.
"Those violations can be generally categorized into two categorie: One is illegal coercive conduct, and the other is illegal retaliation," said Attorney Michael Dolce of Hayes Dolce Labor Law in Buffalo. "In terms of the allegations of illegal course of conduct, that includes unlawful surveillance, such as the employer using its security cameras to monitor workers and also monitoring workers' social media activity. It also includes unlawful threats, such as telling workers that the hotel may close if they were to unionize, or that their wages will be lower if they unionize. In terms of the illegal retaliation, that includes both disciplining and terminating workers for previously unenforced policies, just totally out of the blue."
Dolce calls such conduct on behalf of a large employer like Hyatt against its workers attempting to exercise their fundamental rights to organize and collectively bargain is despicable and completely unacceptable.
"The union plans on fighting it tooth and nail so that workers can exercise those rights, free from coercion and unlawful retaliation like this employer has done, and fight the employer's unilateral control of workers that they desperately attempt to cling to," Dolce said.
Members of Buffalo Hyatt Workers United are expected to hold their unionization vote sometime soon, but no date has been set at this time.
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