April 3, 2012

(Cambridge, MA) – At the end of March 2012, Harvard Management Company, which oversees Harvard University’s $32 billion endowment, announced that it would not reinvest in funds managed by HEI Hospitality. Harvard’s endowment has been one of HEI Hospitality’s key sources of funding, having invested a total of at least $70 million in HEI’s hospitality funds.

Harvard is the latest Ivy League school to join a growing trend of universities across the country distancing themselves from the law-breaking private equity hotelier, HEI Hospitality. HEI investors Yale, Princeton, Vanderbilt and Brown universities have all publicly stated they will not reinvest in HEI. Swarthmore and Cornell universities, which do not currently invest in HEI, have also made similar statements. All told, universities which have decided not to reinvest in HEI account for a total of at least $285 million of investments in past HEI funds.

Also last week, workers at the HEI owned and operated Le Meridien Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts publicly joined other HEI workers across the country who are fighting against sweatshop hotel conditions in HEI hotels.

Read more.

May 5, 2012

According to a statement by Dartmouth President’s Chief of Staff, David Spaulding, the College “has no plans to make future investments in HEI-sponsored funds.” Dartmouth’s announcement is the latest in the growing trend of elite American universities that have specifically decided not to reinvest in HEI Hospitality. Efforts to urge the administration to end its investment at Dartmouth were led by a coalition of student groups, namely Occupy Dartmouth and Students Stand with Staff, the Dartmouth affiliate of United Students Against Sweatshops. Read more about their victory here.

From In These Times

By: David Moberg | April 11, 2012

As undergraduate students at Harvard, Devi Lockwood and Jia Hui Lee would typically have little reason to know Rosa de la Rosa or Heather Nichols, who work just a few miles from Harvard Yard cleaning guest rooms and staffing the front desk, respectively, at Le Meridien Hotel.

But Lockwood and Lee, overcoming the classic town-gown social divide, have successfully joined with fellow students in the school’s Student-Labor Action Movement to win a major victory that may help Rosa and Nichols win a union to help change what they describe as appalling working conditions at the hotel.

Click here to read the entire article.

From: Orange County Register

By: Samantha Schaefer, March 7, 2012

“A former housekeeper at Embassy Suites Irvine has been awarded a $70,000 settlement in a workers compensation case against the hotel.

Maribel Duarte, a Tustin resident and housekeeper for 16 years at Embassy Suites, won the settlement earlier this year for injuries sustained in 2009 and 2010 at the hotel. The company also reimbursed the state Employment Development Department for $6,100 and paid Duarte’s medical bills, which were more than $25,000, said David Goldstein, Duarte’s attorney. Duarte injured her neck, arms and legs from repetitive motion from cleaning hotel rooms, injuries which a doctor found to be completely work related.”

Click here to read the entire story.