Students, Union Call For Harvard to Divest from HEI

Five workers at a hotel owned by HEI Hotels & Resorts—a corporation in which Harvard has invested—claim that they were unjustly fired after complaining about poor working conditions and cooperating in a California state investigation into the company.

Unite Here Local 11, a branch of the same union that employs Harvard University Hospitality and Dining Services workers, is criticizing HEI for their labor practices. According to Unite Here Local 11 officials, the workers have been trying to unionize for over a year.

Harvard’s Student Labor Action Movement is calling for Harvard to not reinvest in HEI in the coming year, and estimates Harvard’s current investment in HEI at about $70 million.

Unite Here and SLAM have criticized HEI in the past for what they have called “union busting” practices.

Leigh Shelton, a spokesperson at Unite Here, said that the women were subject to unpredictable hours and were treated as “underclass employees.”

“It doesn’t seem very legal to me, but I’m no lawyer,” Shelton said.

Ken Melinie, director of human resources for the Hilton Long Beach, said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times Wednesday that the five women were employed by an outside agency. He said that the hotel ended their contract with the agency, which resulted in the women no longer working at the hotel.

“We’ve not terminated any people here,” Melinie said.

Shelton said that HEI’s statement did not seem plausible to the members of Unite Here.

“We don’t buy it,” she said. “Everything happened at Hilton—they were hired by the Hilton, they collected their paychecks at the Hilton, they had the exact same work as full time workers at the Hilton. It’s a real stretch to say that they weren’t employees of the Hilton.”

SLAM members were highly critical of Harvard’s continuing investment in the company.

“Such exploitation of temporary workers is despicable,” said SLAM member William P. Whitham ’14. “Through its significant investments in HEI, Harvard is ultimately complicit in this undemocratic policy, which runs counter to the University’s standards of social responsibility.”

Shelton also called for Harvard to reconsider its investment in HEI.

“We would encourage Harvard to take a long, hard look at HEI’s ethical practices and a hard look at the legality of the way that they handled things,” she said.

—Staff writer Mercer R. Cook can be reached at mcook@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction.

CORRECTION: MAY 1, 2011

The April 29 article "Students, Union Call For Harvard to Divest from HEI" incorrectly said that workers at an HEI hotel were paid below minimum wage. Leigh Shelton, a spokesperson for Unite Here, misspoke about the wages paid to workers.