The Hightower Report

Hyatt Riot

If ignorance is bliss, the corporate chieftains of the Hyatt Hotel chain must be ecstatic.

They pulled a lowdown, sneaky trick on 98 of Hyatt's housekeeping staff in three Boston hotels – thinking that no one would notice, care, or do anything. They badly underestimated Bostonians.

In August, housekeepers at the three hotels were asked to train some new workers to fill in when regulars were sick or on vacation. On Aug. 31, however, the experienced staff – many of whom had worked for Hyatt for more than 20 years – were blindsided by a rude truth: They'd been duped. Management told them they were fired as of that day. It turns out that the workers they'd been training would replace them.

These replacements are employees of an outsourcing corporation called Hospitality Staffing Solutions of Georgia, whose honcho asserts that his workers are paid "competitive wages." Yeah, competitive with poverty.

Indeed, Hyatt's longtime housekeepers were earning $14 to $16 an hour, plus health care and pension benefits. The Hospitality Staffing Solutions workers, however, get a miserly $8 an hour, with zero benefits.

Bostonians are in an uproar. There've been mass demonstrations in front of Hyatt's hotels, the governor has threatened to direct state agencies to stop doing business with Hyatt, even the chamber of commerce has moved a scheduled meeting from the Hyatt, and the Boston Taxi Drivers Association intends to boycott the three hotels.

Meanwhile, Hyatt executives are essentially in hiding, claiming that replacing the workers was an essential "cost-cutting move." Really? Where's Mark Hoplamazian, Hyatt's CEO, who took $6.7 million in pay last year? If he cut his pay by about $1.5 million, that would cover the $7-an-hour difference in pay between the experienced housekeepers and the replacements. Come on, Mark – step up to your leadership responsibilities!

The Chicken War

Uh-oh, America has gotten into a global game of chicken with China. The face-off involves rubber and chickens – not rubber chickens, but the actual birds. And rubber tires.

It seems that Chinese tire manufacturers have been dumping their product on the American market, undercutting U.S. tire-makers. President Obama stood up to this predatory attack by slapping a tariff on the made-in-China tires.

Good! But now the Chinese are threatening to retaliate by putting their own tariffs on chicken meat they import from U.S. processors. Hmmm, bad. Groups like the National Chicken Council are clucking and squawking over this, for U.S. processors ship about $850 million worth of chicken meat annually to China. Though that's less than 2% of the industry's revenue, it's no chicken feed. In fact, it's chicken feet! The exports to China are extremely profitable because about half of these exports are chicken feet and wings.

In our country, the processors get approximately nothing for chicken feet and only a few pennies for wings. The Chinese, however, consider them delicacies – especially the feet – and our corporations are getting up to 80 cents a pound for them.

What's so special about American-grown chicken feet? They're big! As a poultry consultant says, "We have these jumbo, juicy paws the Chinese really love." The size turns out to be the serendipitous result of the industry's breeding program to produce birds with lots of breast meat. To support their heavy breasts, chickens had to grow larger feet. The happy result for the processors is that America has become the world's No. 1 exporter of king-sized chicken feet.

I don't know if that's why the chicken crossed the road, but it is why chicken feet are crossing the ocean – unless they get run over by tires.