T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, praised this week’s national agreement between Hyatt Hotels Corporation and UNITE HERE, the union of hospitality workers in the U.S. and Canada. The new contracts increase wages and maintain healthcare and other benefits for thousands of Hyatt employees through 2018.
UNITE HERE said the agreement will end its global boycott of Hyatt, which drew support from workers’ rights groups, unions, and religious organizations, including T’ruah.
“Jewish law mandates paying workers a fair wage and treating those in our employment justly,” said Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster, Director of North American Programs. “Both Jewish law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights insist on the right to unionize and to a living wage. As rabbis, we have been proud to stand by workers in their campaign to have their human dignity recognized by Hyatt.”
T’ruah signed on to support the workers in 2011, and has organized its network of 1800 rabbis and cantors, and tens of thousands of American Jews to write letters and teach in support of the workers.
“The agreement between the Hyatt Corporation and the hotel workers they employ marks an important victory in the struggle for the dignity of working people who quite frequently are pushed to the fringes of the economy,” said Rabbi Jonathan Klein, Executive Director of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE-LA). “The Jewish community, with its long history of recognizing the inherent worth of all people regardless of race, class, gender, or other categories, joined in this struggle not only to protect those subject to the tenuous stability of corporate America, but to reaffirm our deepest religious obligation to pursue justice and to love the stranger, the widow, and the orphan.”
T’ruah applauds the many rabbis and Jewish activists who stood in solidarity with the hospitality workers. In 2011, T’ruah honored Rabbi Barbara Penzner of Temple Hillel B’nai Torah in West Roxbury, MA, with its Human Rights Hero award for exposing Hyatt’s mass firing of permanent employees in three Boston hotels, and replacement of the workers with temporary employees who received lower wages.
Rabbi Penzner today praised the coalition that helped bring about the labor agreement, saying, “I am proud of the concerted efforts by rabbis, cantors and Jewish leaders to support the Hyatt workers in their courageous efforts for fair working conditions. I am also renewed in my faith in the power of teshuva, the path of forgiveness and reconciliation, and in the power of shalom bayit, working together to create a better workplace for everyone, employers and employees alike.”
Rabbi Kahn-Troster also noted that while this is a great step forward, there is much work to be done:
“The Hyatt workers have a good contract, but our campaign to ensure fair conditions for hotel workers is far from over. T’ruah will continue its ongoing campaign to help Jewish community organizations include protective language in their hotel contracts in order to ensure that conferences, galas, and other events are not held at venues undergoing a labor dispute.”
“Jewish organizations often plan conferences years in advance,” she said. “We want to make sure that every Jewish organization is empowered to deal with these disputes in a way that is consistent with our ethics without bankrupting vital organizations.”