U.: Hotel agrees to hire most Faculty Club staff

Penn's new proposal would offer jobs to 70 percent of current Faculty Club workers. University officials announced this week that DoubleTree Hotels -- which will operate the new Inn at Penn at Sansom Common -- has agreed to offer employment to 70 percent of all full-time union workers currently employed at the Faculty Club when the Club moves into the new hotel this summer. The employees who are rehired by DoubleTree will also receive a University tuition break -- even though they will no longer be employed by Penn -- according to Vice President for Human Resources Jack Heuer. Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 274 President Patrick Coughlan said yesterday that he could not comment on this new offer until he meets with a committee composed of union leaders, Faculty Club workers and the union's attorney, Peter Marks. Inn at Penn General Manager Dave Newhart said he was unaware yesterday of any offer made by DoubleTree to hire a guaranteed percentage of workers. "That's news to me," Newhart said, adding that until he receives notice from his corporate office that a change has been made, he will stand by a statement he made last week indicating that current Faculty Club employees will be given no advantage in the interviewing process. The announcement, made by Penn Executive Vice President John Fry in letters to the University community printed on the opinion page of today's Daily Pennsylvanian and in yesterday's Almanac -- the University's journal-of-record -- represents an addition to the severance package offered by the University in October. That package included a 3 percent wage increase to all non-tipped Club employees, a $500 lump sum signing bonus to employees who signed before October 19, a union pension fund increase, two unpaid days for union shop steward education and one week severance pay for each full year of service. "This offer -- an offer we believe to be fair -- remains on the table," Fry wrote. He refused to comment further on the matter. But Heuer said that "we put out an offer in October and we put out increased negotiations yesterday. The University is ready and willing to meet." Union leaders have thus far refused to bargain with University officials. They never responded to the October offer, and insist that any contract signed by the University also be binding for DoubleTree's management. But because DoubleTree is a separate business entity, the University claims in its charge that it "could not lawfully impose a collective bargaining agreement upon DoubleTree and its employees." University officials said they have become so "frustrated with the process" that they have filed charges of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board, according to Heuer. In response to the University's charges, Coughlan said, "They can file all they want -- we haven't done anything wrong." The University and Union Local 274 have been in dispute since a contract negotiation meeting last July, when University officials announced they would create a contract to terminate Faculty Club employees' jobs this summer. Local 274 leaders filed similar charges of unfair labor practice recently which accused University officials of "surface-bargaining," according to Director of the Philadelphia Region of the National Labor Relations Board Dorothy Moore-Duncan. Union Local 274's attorney Peter Marks did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the charges filed by the University.