Hyatt workers stage short walkouts in L.A., Hawaii

(Crain's) — Union workers at Hyatt hotels in Honolulu and the Los Angeles area are staging brief strikes amid an impasse in labor contract talks with Chicago-based Hyatt Hotels Corp.

Hyatt employees at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki and the Andaz West Hollywood walked off the job Thursday, part of a wave of demonstrations that hotel workers union Unite Here is staging across North America this week to put pressure on the hotel chain and the Pritzker family, its primary owners.

“Hyatt is looking for major concessions despite the fact that the economy is rebounding and the company has huge cash reserves,” says a spokeswoman for Unite Here Local 1, which represents hotel workers in downtown Chicago.

In a statement, Hyatt says it has been negotiating in "good faith" with the union.

"While we have come to expect a certain amount of union posturing during negotiations, we are disappointed that rather than engaging in productive negotiations at the bargaining table, which is the only way we will reach resolution on issues important to our associates and to us, the union is choosing instead to attempt to disrupt business at multiple Hyatt hotels," the company says.

The union plans similar walkouts Friday at other Hyatt hotels, including one in the Chicago area, according the Local 1 spokeswoman. The union didn't release the name of the local hotel.

Unite Here represents about 500 workers at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki and 130 at the Andaz. The labor contract for the Honolulu hotel expired in June, while the Andaz pact ran out in November.

Hyatt is seeking “very minimal or no raises” for union employees and reductions in health care coverage, the union spokeswoman says.

“There's been no progress made,” she says.

Unite Here workers staged walkouts at the Hyatt Regency Chicago for a few hours in May and picketed briefly Tuesday outside the Chicago Sheraton Hotel & Towers to protest working conditions at the downtown hotels.

The protests at the Honolulu and West Hollywood hotels will also be of "limited duration," but they are aimed at drawing attention to the contract talks, the union spokeswoman says.