One after the other, the five major candidates for Boston mayor took the stage at a labor protest Monday to support the 230 workers fired by the Marriott Copley last fall and endorse the call for a boycott of the hotel.
With several hundred activists — and local politicos — gathered on the plaza across form the hotel entrance, acting Mayor Kim Janey was the first of the candidates to throw down the gauntlet. "Shame on Marriott," she said. "I will always stand with the hotel workers." She led the crowd in a call and response chant: "Are we going to boycott Marriott?" "Yes!" the crowd yelled back.
Marriott fired the workers last fall as the pandemic obliterated the local tourism business, and it made no promise to rehire then when business returned. Workers say they have been told they will have to reapply for their jobs with no guarantee of returning to the same pay.
After Janey, the other mayoral candidates — John Barros, Michelle Wu, Andrea Campbell and Annissa Essaibi George each took their turn bashing Marriot — and siding with the workers. "We need to Boycott Marriott," Campbell said; Wu added "the Marriott Copley has a long track record of throwing workers under the bus."
More Politics
Massachusetts AFL-CIO president Steve Tolman made clear at the start of the event that the Marriott battle was only the tip of a much bigger concern about workers rights. He argued that the next big battle will be preventing tech companies like Amazon and Uber from coming into the state and categorizing its workers as independent contractors, instead of full-time employees entitled to overtime and other benefits.
"We've got these corporation giants from silicon valley," he thundered, "They are coming to Massachusetts, folks and they want to BS all of ya; they want to run a campaign to dupe ya."
U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey also took turns at the mic and took turns bashing Marriott, but U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley had pershaps the most personal connection to the hotel: She used to work there, she said.
"When I first came to Boston," Pressley said — she is a Chicago native who came to Boston for college in 1992 — "I worked three part time jobs to make ends meet. One of those jobs was at the Marriott hotel." Pressley said she worked on the wait staff for banquets for 6 years. "So I know what it is to be part of an invisible workforce," she said.
Calls to the Marriott Copley and Marriott corporate headquarters were not returned Monday.
