UNITE HERE, the hospitality workers union, commends Yale University for its decision not to reinvest in private-equity hotelier, HEI Hospitality.  Earlier this year, Brown University announced that it will not reinvest in HEI until the University is confident that HEI is respecting the rights of its workers, and the University of Pennsylvania stated publicly that it had no current plans to make future investments in HEI-sponsored funds.

“It is unacceptable for socially conscious universities to invest in a company that operates sweatshop hotels and exploits its workers. I hope that Harvard Management Company and other university endowments make the same public commitment to not reinvest in HEI,” said Sam Wohns, a sophomore at Harvard University.  Click here to read Yale’s statement. Click here to view the entire press release.

Managers of university investments, like most managers of huge piles of money, typically do not like being told what to do with their riches—particularly when demands are coming from, say, student activists insisting that their school stop investing in an extremely profitable company posting double-digit annual returns.

But students at universities investing in HEI Hotels and Resorts have recently forced their investment offices to listen. The campaign presents a powerful, replicable model of students and workers uniting to challenge their respective institutions where they are vulnerable—and force them to act in favor of workers.

Click here to read the entire article.

Victory at Cornell University

By: Molly Beckhardt

In the summer of 2011, I had the incredible opportunity to participate in the Organizing Beyond Barriers program with UNITE HERE Local 2 in San Francisco.  During my internship, I learned about the hotel workers’ fight for decent working conditions at HEI hotels nationwide.  I knew very little about labor in the hospitality industry before working with UNITE HERE, but having the opportunity to speak with hotel workers at the HEI Le Meridian hotel exposed me to the dark side of luxury in the hotel business.

When I learned that HEI invests university money to prop up its lucrative hotel franchise, I was furious.  However, students on college campuses across the country are collaborating with hotel workers to pressure HEI into reforming its working conditions.  I, as a Cornell student, knew that I could join in the fight as well.  Last semester, I told my fellow students in the Cornell Organization for Labor Action about our school’s potential ties to the HEI sweatshop hotel business.  Other students were just as upset as I was, so we sent a letter to our President to find out if our school was invested in HEI.

This was hard for me to coordinate because our group was simultaneously working on other labor campaigns and, of course, we are always trying to balance academic work with activism.  On a more personal level, however, I haven’t had a great deal of leadership experience.  Shortly after communicating with President Skorton about HEI, he responded in an email assuring us that Cornell was not invested in the company and had no plans to do so.  This was an uplifting victory for worker and student power!  It was also one of the first times that I took charge in a student campaign on my own (but with great support from UNITE HERE) and taught me how to follow through on organizing campaigns from beginning to end.

From The Harvard Crimson

December 16, 2011

Certainly, a thorough investigation of allegations of labor rights abuses and mistreatment of workers is important before Harvard makes any decision about non-reinvestment. However, we presume that our peer institutions have also conducted investigations of HEI’s labor practices before issuing statements of intention not to reinvest. For example, Brown’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies noted that it “thoroughly and diligently considered pertinent materials” before making the decision that Brown would no longer put its money in a company that infringes upon workers’ rights. As such, we predict that the outcome of Harvard’s investigation will indeed find that HEI is indeed an unethical investment. If it does, Harvard should commit not to reinvest in HEI until its working conditions improve.

Click here to read the entire article.

December 16, 2011

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