NLRB Rejects Hyatt’s Request For Election As Labor Union Pressures Employees

It’s rare for a company with workers targeted by Big Labor for unionization to ask the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a unionization election. That initiative is usually taken by the unions themselves.

But that’s exactly what hotel chain Hyatt did at four of its locations after Unite Here organizers allegedly badgered its workers by showing up at their houses and following them to places like supermarkets in order to pressure them to unionize. Unite Here is a labor union that represents various service industry workers, including workers employed at hotels, airports, food service providers and casinos. Unite Here doesn’t want to hold secret-ballot elections, though, despite leading numerous activities Hyatt contends are tantamount to organizing efforts.

Over the past few years, Hyatt says Unite Here has asked for payroll audits, demanded modifications in Hyatt’s employee health benefits plan, “wrongfully taken credit” for improvements in wages and working conditions, and filed complaints with the Department of Labor’s office of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Hyatt also said that the union has “misled” hotel guests about working conditions at its hotels. Hyatt says those activities and others should be enough to show Unite Here is trying to organize workers at those locations, and that they should be the equivalent of a union request for an election. But regional offices for the NLRB rejected Hyatt’s requests for unionization elections at all four locations in question: Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco; Long Beach, Calif.; Santa Clara, Calif.; and Indianapolis, Indiana.

Hyatt’s chief human resources officer, Rob Webb, told The Daily Caller the reason Hyatt asked the NLRB for secret-ballot elections was so workers could once-and-for-all decide whether or not they want Unite Here to represent them. “The employees have been telling us that there have been visits to their homes in the evening from delegations from Unite Here,” Webb said. “We understand there have been instances where they [Hyatt employees] go grocery shopping, and folks [from the union] kind of going into the store and walk with them into the parking lot to talk them into joining the union. We also know at these four properties they’ve been contacting customers of the hotel to try to dissuade them from coming to the hotel sort of to put pressure, presumably, on us.”

Webb said that, from his perspective, the union organizers are acting like they represent the employees at those four hotels when they really don’t.

More here