Hotel staffing company (Atlanta firm that the Hyatt hired) faced wage complaints

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2009/09/26/hotel_staffing_company_faced_wage_complaints/

By Katie Johnston Chase

The toilets are still being scrubbed and the sheets changed at the three Hyatt hotels in the Boston area, but the workers performing these tasks are making half as much money to maintain up to twice as many rooms as the staff housekeepers the hotel fired.

The dismissal of 98 Boston area housekeepers on Aug. 31 ignited public outcry and prompted boycotts against Hyatt, which said yesterday that it would offer the fired housekeepers jobs through a staffing agency or worker retraining options. It also thrust into the spotlight the Atlanta firm that the Hyatt hired to replace the housekeepers, Hospitality Staffing Solutions, a company that has faced several complaints of wage violations in recent years.

Hospitality Staffing Solutions has faced lawsuits in Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, including a 2009 class-action suit on behalf of more than 100 janitors and housekeepers at two Pittsburgh Hyatts. And Audrey Richardson, a lawyer with Greater Boston Legal Services, said there are six wage-related complaints against the company pending with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, which doesn’t comment on open cases.

President Rick Holliday addressed the complaints against the company, which has about 4,800 employees in 450 hotels around the country, saying that “administrative mistakes’’ might have been made, but the firm treats workers with dignity and respect.

“You don’t run a business for 18 years and have the amount of employees that we have in the cities we have and not make a mistake,’’ said Holliday, who would only say he had “quite a few’’ employees in the Boston area.

Sonia Lopez, a 32-year-old former Hospitality Staffing Solutions worker, started cleaning 16 rooms a day for $8 an hour at the Cambridge Hyatt in March. A week after the Hyatt housekeepers were fired, she said, she was told to clean 25 rooms a day, adding at least an hour and a half to her workday without additional pay.

FULL story at link.