A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [59]
All that this market fundamentalism is about is letting people’s consciences off the hook. If the market is “just,” none of us is responsible for the havoc it may wreak. But the invisible hand of the market need not be free of ethical values, and ought not be. In any event, there is a right way to lay off people and a wrong way, and this was the wrong way. The Bible admonishes believers to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly. Secular equivalents in every culture and community require us to respect the dignity of others.
I intervened in the Hyatt dispute to remind this company as well as others that the financial bottom line is not the only bottom line. There is also a community bottom line, an environmental bottom line, a moral bottom line, and public leadership should try to integrate all of them.
I communicated these messages to Hyatt’s chief executive in several telephone calls and letters. In one I wrote, “I understand first hand how difficult it is to manage through the current economic challenges without compounding the disruptions the times have caused. But surely there is some way to retain the jobs for your housekeeping staffs, as other hotels have done, and to work with them to help the company meet its current challenges, rather than tossing them out unceremoniously to fend for themselves while the people they trained take their jobs at barely livable wages.”
I also warned that I would direct state employees to boycott all Hyatt properties when conducting state business unless the ninety-eight housekeepers were rehired. The threat was more symbolic than anything else. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts does not do enough business with Hyatt hotels to make a dent in their revenues, but I was not alone among public officials in condemning the company. Boston’s mayor, Thomas Menino, and U.S. Congressman Michael Capuano, among others, also expressed their outrage. Several hundred hotel workers and their supporters held a loud rally in front of the Hyatt Regency Boston and received ample television coverage. Protests were staged at Hyatts in Chicago and San Francisco. The Boston Taxi Drivers Association vowed to boycott the Hyatt properties unless the housekeepers were given their jobs back. A group of more than two hundred rabbis and cantors from around the country signed a petition saying that Hyatt had not only insulted its workers but insulted the Torah as well.
In the face of this public relations disaster, Hyatt did make some concessions. It offered positions to the housekeepers with the staffing organization that it uses for contract labor. Hyatt said those who accepted the positions would be paid their full Hyatt wages through the end of 2010. Those who didn’t accept could opt for a “job preparedness and placement assistance program.” Each housekeeper also received an extension of Hyatt health care benefits.
But a mere half dozen of the housekeepers accepted the offer to work at the staffing agency. I wasn’t surprised. Those women were not so different from the ladies in the big hats of Cosmopolitan Community Church—compassionate and loving, yes, but also proud and resilient. Once you insult them, you can’t expect them to want to be in business with you, let alone scrub your bathrooms.
Whether it’s at my church, in my work, or in my daily life, I try not to wear my faith on my sleeve (the ladies of Cosmopolitan would show little patience for that) but to contribute where I can to the common good. It’s a struggle. I have a mean temper, my patience can wear thin, and I can be short with people who are short with me. I am definitely still working on “turning the other cheek.” But more often than not, I have learned that kindness to friend and foe alike moves me further forward and gives me more lasting satisfaction than any other way of being in the world. As Jesse Jackson once said in an elegant