Hyatt and union reach national settlement after four years of strife
Photo Credit: Chicago teachers join protesting Hyatt workers outside the Hyatt Regency Chicago on April 9, 2011. Flickr.com / Jean Paul Holmes
Skift Take
This is good news for Hyatt family member Penny Prtizker, the new U.S. commerce secretary, as the family was dogged by the labor strife. It also shows that U.S. unions aren't dead, and that hotel employees have the right to do their jobs with dignity.
After a blistering four-year labor battle, Hyatt Hotels Corp. and workers union Unite Here reached a tentative settlement that will give employees pay and benefits increases for nearly a decade, going back to 2009 and reaching forward to mid-2018.
The warring parties hammered out a national agreement, announced Monday, for workers in Chicago, the company's home base, as well as San Francisco, Honolulu and Los Angeles. Altogether, about 5,000 workers would see pay and benefits packages rise an average of 4 percent a year, Hyatt said.
If workers ratify the terms in the next few weeks, it would close the door on an acrimonious feud in which the union criticized Hyatt's track record as an employer and the hotel company accused the union leadership of holding its members hostage to its recruitment agenda.
The union led a global boycott a
