Hyatt Hotels endanger workers

Women in the U.S. and
Canada helped Hyatt housekeepers
 clean their rooms on Nov 18.

Hyatt ranks dead last among 50 hotel chains for workplace injuries to its housekeeping staff, Buzzflash reports.

But quarterly profits for the company, which is owned by the Pritzker family, just rose sixfold and its stock soared 39 percent this year.

UNITE HERE says Hyatt's injury rate is 50 percent higher than the industry average. And an academic study in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine ranked it last among 50 hotels surveyed.

The abysmal record prompted Hyatt housekeepers at twelve hotels in eight different cities to simultaneously file injury complaints a few weeks ago with the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA),

reports Carl Finamore,Air Transport Employees, Local Lodge 1781, IAMAW, representative to the San Francisco Labor Council, for Buzzflash. It's the first-ever synchronized OSHA complaint in the private sector.

A big reason for all the injuries: at some Hyatt hotels the housekeepers have to clean 30 rooms a day, an ungodly amount. UNITE HERE says,

that's 15 minutes to make beds, scrub and clean the toilet bowl, bathtub and all bathroom surfaces, dust, vacuum, empty the trash, change linens-among other things.

So if you have to stay at a Hyatt, at the very least be sure to give the housekeeper a generous tip.