You may have seen the "Joey Quits" youtube video, in which a young hotel worker hires a brass band to accompany his resignation.
Dave Jamieson at Huffington Post reports on the story behind Joey's dramatic exit:
DeFrancesco says that he worked at the hotel during a hard-fought unionization drive that he supported. According to news reports, workers at the Renaissance voted to join a union a little over a year and a half ago. The workers eventually became members of the service and hotel union UNITE HERE, but DeFrancesco stresses that he was acting on his own behalf and without union approval when he tendered his resignation.
One of the main reasons the workforce had decided to unionize was scheduling issues; they would sometimes get out late at night and have to return for the early-morning shift, just a few hours later. Yet while a lot of benefits came out of joining UNITE HERE -- most notably, raises -- DeFrancesco also says the union push was a bitter one that strained relations between management and rank-and-file workers. He claims that he lost many of the shifts he'd previously had, which is one reason he'd decided to part ways and capture it on video.Just FYI.
