An Ethical Decision
Every year, my school holds a holiday party to celebrate the end of the fall semester. It’s a festive occasion, hosted by the MBA Council (of which I am a vice president), held at a posh location in the Boston area. It’s an opportunity to get dressed up and unwind with classmates before heading off in our various directions for Winter Break.
This year’s holiday party planning proceeded as normal, with a small committee scouting venues. The lead venue that the committee returned to the Council with was the Cambridge Hyatt, a beautiful site on the other side of the river with high rise views of Boston and the most affordable price quote of the venues reviewed. However, I had caught a story in the local news recently about questionable business practices by the Cambridge Hyatt. The Hyatt had brought in a group of new employees at minimum wage, told their long-term (20+ years, living wage paycheck) employees that they were going to be their seasonal help to fill in for them during vacations. They had their existing employees train the new workers and then fired 98 of their older, higher earning workers without warning.
I brought my concerns to the Council and we discussed the issue, agreeing that we couldn’t do business with a company who acted so unethically. We informed our contact at the Hyatt of our concerns and moved to looking at other venues. The Hyatt, however, after incurring a (pardon my language) shitstorm in the media, realized the PR nightmare of their error and sent us a response letter telling us that they had rectified the situation. They promised to find jobs for the 98 fired employees and to continue their health benefits for six months. We corroborated their story with local news reports and decided that one of the important lessons in business is recovering from failure. We decided to extend them a second chance, particularly since the party committee was so favorable about the location’s suitability for our event and the fact that they were still the cheapest venue.
The semester continued and party planning continued on uneventfully. As VP of Marketing, I created posters for the party and we began publicizing the event and selling tickets. At this point, a classmate who had been following the case emailed a couple of council members to raise issue with holding the holiday party at the Hyatt. The recipients responded to his email with the information that the Hyatt had given us and considered the issue resolved. Then, however, other classmates began asking me about the Hyatt issue. I, too, reiterated the information that we had; however, I also went looking for more information from that great being in the ether – Google.
What I dug up was that the former Hyatt employees were dissatisfied with the concessions that the Hyatt had made. It turns out that the Hyatt had lived up to the literal words of their promise, but had still short changed their former employees. The jobs that they “found” for them were temporary, minimum wage positions with the very same staffing agency that had been used to replace them. Moreover, when one of the employees went to get medical care for her child, they were denied service. Due to a “clerical error” medical benefits had been cut-off for employees’ dependents.
Students who were aware of this situation were upset (and rightly so) about having our holiday party at the Hyatt, and thus breaking a boycott that the Governor had called against the hotel as well as essentially condoning the company’s behavior. We held a meeting to discuss the issue with concerned members of the student body, at which we decided to survey students regarding their thoughts on the matter. The survey was, in my opinion, unclearly worded. Regardless, the results showed that 60% of students would still attend the holiday party if it were held at the Hyatt (the wording did not give the opportunity to indicate preference for another venue over the Hyatt, nor did it explain that students could get refunds if they didn’t want to go to the Hyatt).
The Council held a second, emergency meeting (since the party date is so close) to vote on the issue. Again, we had impassioned speeches from people from either perspective. We discussed the earlier raised prospects of holding the event in January or holding it on the same date but at an alternative venue (other spaces had become available due to cancellations and vacancies and were offering extremely reasonable prices in order to fill their ballrooms at the last minute). We also discussed the $4,000 cancellation fee that we would incur for canceling our contract with the Hyatt.
I strongly favored moving the party to another venue or another date. In this era of ethical debate within the business world, with business schools jockeying for attention for signing (in my opinion, meaningless) oaths, I felt that it was an opportunity to demonstrate our commitment as a student body to being ethical business people. As a member of the MBA Council and a caretaker of student monies, I take my responsibility seriously, however my ethics don’t have a price tag. To me, the $4,000 was a penalty worth paying if it meant that our school could make a statement of not condoning unethical practices by the Hyatt. (In addition, there were very real possibilities of reducing the budget gap due to the lower price quotes by other venues, among other means.)
The majority of the Council did not agree with me. They voted to keep the holiday party at the Hyatt.
So, if anyone needs me on Friday, I will be dressed up, sporting some sparkly jewelry, ready to party. I will be celebrating the end of the semester with about 30 of my closest friends and classmates. We will not be at the Hyatt with the rest of our peers. We will be enjoying drinks and music, and our integrity, somewhere else.
