The Westin announced yesterday that it’s going to lay-off a ton of workers and subcontract out to lower-paying entities:
PROVIDENCE — About 50 Westin Providence Hotel workers were notified Friday that their jobs would be farmed out to a subcontracting firm and they would be laid off at the end of the month.
The move is a blow to the 200-member hotel workers union, which has held regular demonstrations in front of the downtown hotel and called for a boycott of the hotel after the Procaccianti Group, the Westin’s managers, unilaterally imposed wage cuts, health-care cost increases and increased workloads on union workers in mid-March.
The union, whose contract expired in October, says it will continue to call for a boycott.
So say the hypocrites at Procaccianti, who haven’t taken any pay cuts over the course of the fight:
Ralph V. Izzi, Jr., a company spokesman, said in a statement that the hotel’s decision follows 11 separate negotiating sessions with the union that failed to produce a new contract.
“It was clear the union was the only sector of the hotel that refused to demonstrate a willingness to bear any sacrifice or help mitigate the effects of the worst economy since the Great Depression,” Izzi said.
Stay tuned for more news on how to help the workers as they press forward in their struggle.