Hyatt restaurant staff wants to get back to work
There is something wrong at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Greenwich. It is a hotel that should serve our business community by providing a place where important meetings can happen over dinner or a drink; it is a place where groups should celebrate special events. There is an extraordinary atrium filled with fancy water features and a variety of tree species. Its restaurant has become part of families’ annual traditions. But while guests are continuing to pay luxury hotel prices, the hotel’s restaurant is shuttered. As Connecticut’s hospitality industry gears up for bailout funds from the state of Connecticut, the Hyatt Regency Hotel’s management is requiring that guests forgo a fullservice hotel with cost-cutting measures that detract from our tourism industry and eliminate good union jobs. We deserve better.
Fortunately, bar and restaurant workers, who have served guests in this hotel for decades, are now fighting back for themselves, their families, the guests, the hotel and our community.
I had the opportunity to hear from bar and restaurant workers at the Hyatt Regency Hotel as they delivered a petition to Hyatt management asking for the hotel restaurant to reopen so they can get back to work. When the Hyatt first closed in March 2020, these workers were laid off, and they’ve struggled through a stagnant economy for the past year and a half, waiting to be recalled to their jobs. Even though the Hyatt has returned to full occupancy, the restaurant has remained closed.
Many of the hotel workers I spoke to have worked at the Hyatt for decades and are devastated that the hotel they dedicated their careers to is now treating them so disrespectfully. One worker remarked that a family who comes to the Hyatt every Christmas asks for her by name. Another described feeling frustrated by news reports about laid-off workers not wanting to return to their jobs; on the contrary, he’s spent the last year and a half waiting for the hotel to call him back to work. After years of service to the Hyatt, these employees are still out of work, while the hotel welcomes more guests every day.
Even as these workers struggle with unemployment, they also worry about the damage that these cost-cutting measures are having on a hotel where they have committed so much of their careers. Bar and restaurant workers have built relationships with guests over years of service. One worker has friends who are asking when the hotel will reopen the restaurant. Others fear that guests could give up on the hotel and cease making it a part of their family trips.
Nothing about the pandemic was normal. During a time of fear and uncertainty, we all made sacrifices to protect ourselves and our communities. But with reopening underway, the sacrifices should not become standardized. When a hotel like the Hyatt Regency is successfully recovering, dedicated workers who have struggled through a year and a half of layoffs should be able to come back to the jobs they depend on, and hotel guests should be able to enjoy full services when they visit our city.
We now need a just recovery, instead of cost-cutting and jobs-eliminating schemes from an industry that is also pleading for public money. Leisure and hospitality workers were among the hardest hit by the pandemic. Nearly 40 percent lost their jobs at the peak of the pandemic. These workers are disproportionately female and non-white. Decisions made by hotel managers will influence whether we come out of this crisis more divided and more unequal.
Recently, Connecticut Lodging Association Executive Director Virginia Kozlowski cited an expert saying that 35 percent of the people in the hospitality sector who have lost their jobs have moved onto other sectors. She suggested that “Hospitality needs to be more proactive in offering hospitality as a career, not just as a job.” You can call it a good job or a career, but we now have an opportunity where the hotel industry can put Ms. Kozlowski’s suggestion into practice. Bar and restaurant workers, who have been out of work for months, are fighting to get their good jobs back and are fighting for a full recovery of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Greenwich. Will the hotel industry pass up the temptation for more destructive cost-cutting measures in favor of providing good union jobs and restoring a service that brings families back to the hotel every Christmas? Will it stick with austerity measures that leave workers unemployed and a city with one less amenity that made it a destination for business and leisure travel?