Hyatt on Union Square
28-Day City-Wide Hotel
Strike
Local Two
called for a city-wide strike against 21 major
hotels in San Francisco to protest wages and benefits.
The Hotel Association of San Francisco
was selected to monitor the situation in terms of the media, to
serve as spokespersons, and to mediate on behalf of all of the
hotels. Two days after the strike began, the Association stonewalled the press and the hotels received
completely negative coverage. The hotels' version of the strike was missing in all of the news coverage, because the Association
refused to allow the press into the hotels to get a balanced
story. The resulting coverage, "management vs. maids."
was therefore very one-sided and extremely negative.
On the fourth day of the
strike, Hyatt's general manager asked Sandie Wernick to take over media
relations for
his hotel in defiance of the Hotel Association's rules. He was very concerned about the negative coverage and felt
he needed to get the hotel's message out
fast and accurately. The strike lasted a total of 28 days and
Sandie and the members of Hyatt's management team lived inside the hotel for the duration,
remaining on-call 24/7.
Sandie
immediately wrote a
pro-active crisis plan, scripted media responses and media trained major department
heads and selected hotel guests for print, television and radio interviews.
After approvals were given, Sandie invited selected media inside, escorted them to
Hyatt spokespersons and managed positive message dissemination.
All messages expressed the hotel's concern for its "family of
employees,'' both in and outside of the hotel, and its hope that the strike would end soon
as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Due to the volatile nature of the union at that time, as well as the
extreme gamut of emotions, and at great risk for personal safety,
Sandie carefully positioned herself outside the hotel each time the union held
spontaneous "press conferences" in order to countermand
misleading statements and allegations.
Hyatt's
crisis
plan was incredibly successful, resulting in the only positive public relations coverage on behalf of
a hotel to emerge during the strike. The resulting stories portrayed Hyatt management as
"caring and concerned" about
all employees, both inside and out on the sidewalk, and the
coverage greatly benefited the employees’ personal and working relationships
once the strike was settled.
In addition to a tremendous
amount of press coverage in all mediums, Sandie Wernick was awarded First Place in Crisis Communications
by the American Hotel & Motel Association. Hyatt Corporation flew her to Washington, DC
for the awards ceremony.
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