Management Goes "Old School": Turns Heat Lamps on Strikers on 100° Day

This sounds like the cruel treatment of the "robber barons" of old, doesn't it? Poor abused or at least aggrieved workers set upon by dogs, or in this case, heat lamps on a scorching hot day, to dissuade them from striking.

The heat lamps are used in the winter to help keep the sidewalks clear and to give their guests a bit of a respite from the cold as they enter and exit their limos one might presume. Al Gore comes to mind.

But, what makes this story ever so delicious is exactly which robber baron is abusing the strikers:

Pritzker turns heat lamps on striking Hyatt workers. That's the chair of Barack Obama's national campaign finance committee, Penny Sue Pritzker.*

It was already approaching 100° at 8 a.m. when I arrived at the Park Hyatt where, after 22 months of stalled negotiations, hotel workers were staging a one-day picket to protest the hotel chain's intolerable treatment of their housekeeping staff.

In case you didn't know, Hyatt is owned by the Pritzker family. Heiress Penny Sue Pritzker chairs Obama's national campaign finance committee. She is also big player in Democratic Party politics as well as in the world of anti-union, corporate school reform and was recently appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to a seat on the Chicago school board.

Pritzker's response to the Park Hyatt strikers was to turn on the hotel's powerful heating lamps to try and bake the workers into submission on this brutally hot day.

What's that Obama said about walking the picket lines and standing with the unions? Well, so far, not only has Obama not shown up on any picket lines (not too surprising, since most of his campaign promises come with an expiration date) but now, one of his chief fundraisers is using a little old fashioned union busting when it affects her personally.

Expect a flood of outrage from the President who said the Cambridge police "acted stupidly", when he knew nothing of the circumstances, to vigorously condemn and perhaps fire his campaign finance chair. (Stop laughing!) Maybe he could add this outrage to his litany of millionaires and billionaires and why we need to raise their taxes? Don't hold your breath.

*To be fair, we don't know that it was Penny Sue with her hand on the switch, but using the Obama "acted stupidly" standard, the threshold is very low.

H/T Memeorandum

Cross posted at Left Coast Rebel, Say Anything.