Less than 24-hours after turning heat lamps on strikers outside its entrance, Penny Pritzker’s Park Hyatt Chicago, the hotel has apologized according to Reuters:
Hyatt hotels apologized Friday for an incident in which heat lamps were turned on above workers on strike at a Chicago hotel, when the heat index was already 90 degrees.
“Hyatt regrets the events that occurred at Park Hyatt Chicago and apologizes to everyone who was impacted by them,” the Chicago-based hotel company said in a statement.
Workers started gathering for the daylong strike at about 5 a.m. Thursday morning. At 7 a.m., heat lamps intended to warm the front entrance of the hotel during winter were switched on and remained on for about an hour, said Annemarie Strassel, spokeswoman for United Here Local 1, which represents the hotel workers.
“We immediately started sweating,” said Gabriel Carrasquillo, 48, a restaurant server at the hotel who participated in the strike. “It got hot really fast.”
He said about 25 workers were picketing where the heat lamps are — a total of 70 were around the building. He said workers responded to the heat lamps by chanting “Do what you want, we’re not leaving,” and “You can’t smoke us out.”
Apparently, in today’s politically-motivated world, someone as close to President Obama as Penny Pritzker is decided that she couldn’t take the heat, so she got out of the kitchen.
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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776
