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from: Mark J. Lowder <mlowder@email.arizona.edu> Sent : Monday, November 1, 2004 3:34 PM To : <mesana@u.arizona.edu> Subject : Urgent Message from MESA's Board of Directors IMPORTANT AND URGENT MEMO TO MEMBERS FROM MESA's BOARD OF DIRECTORS As you may know, there is a labor dispute in the hotel in San Francisco where the MESA meeting is scheduled for November 20-23. The hotel owners have locked out the union employees, refused to agree to the mayor's call for a ninety-day cooling off period, and the union is picketing the hotel. There has been a great deal of discussion among members about the possibility that MESA would move the meeting. The Secretariat looked extensively into the options available. The Board of Directors met by conference call yesterday and decided that the San Francisco meeting would proceed. A number of provisions have been made to permit members to attend as much as possible of the meeting without patronizing the hotel. This memo outlines the Board's rationale and describes the measures taken to facilitate attendance by members wishing to support the union. The key element in the Board's decision was the contract with the Hyatt Regency Hotel (signed in 1998). The Secretariat investigated the possibility of an exchange--meeting at another Hyatt hotel elsewhere--with the Hyatt Regency's Vice President and General Manager. As we learned, the Hyatt Regency is not a fully corporately owned hotel. The owners group is not willing to relocate MESA to another Hyatt Regency, nor to allow MESA to cancel the meeting and contract for a future year. MESA hired lawyers specializing in contract law in two states, Arizona and California, to review our contract with the Hyatt Regency. They advised us that MESA's liability, should it cancel the Hyatt contract, would be: $380,000 in lost room revenue, $266,000 in cancellation fees, and an undetermined amount of other lost revenue (restaurants, room service, outlets). They said MESA will expose itself to a lawsuit and an additional several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees. Legally speaking, MESA cannot demonstrate material damage. According to the attorneys, courts don't care about immaterial issues. In addition, the Hyatt Regency has made some concessions to MESA and could use this to argue that it has attempted to act in good faith. The lawyers further advised that MESA could offer to buy out the contract for $150,000-$200,000, with no guarantee that this offer would be accepted. Another possibility is to move the meeting to the weekend of March 19-22, 2005 with no guarantee from the hotel that the strike will be over. In that case, MESA could be in the situation once again, and members who re-booked flights, reapplied for visas, etc. would be in the same boat. MESA's endowment, not including its restricted awards funds, is $400,000 (see MESA's annual external financial audit which appears in every Winter issue of the MESA Bulletin). The approximately $60,000 sitting in MESA's checking account is allocated toward outstanding obligations (including amounts due to Cambridge University Press for IJMES, non-cancelable annual meeting expenses incurred but not yet paid, etc.). The Board is persuaded that canceling or postponing the meeting would bankrupt the Association and represent a major financial loss to many individual members. Fully 28% of the panelists are coming to the meeting from overseas. They have already applied for their visas and, like many of their US-based colleagues, have already booked non-refundable air tickets. MESA has taken steps to minimize its business with the hotel. We negotiated a waiver of the room occupancy requirement; normally, we must guarantee that a certain number of nights will be filled (our "room block"); if we fall below that number, we would ordinarily pay a penalty. At no cost to themselves members can now express their dissatisfaction with the hotel management by staying anywhere they choose and without damaging their organization. A list of non-lockout, non-strike hotels is available on the MESA website. The annual Board of Directors meeting will take place elsewhere, as will the MESA reception, both in locations just five minutes walk from the hotel. A few affiliates have scheduled their functions in other nearby locations. MESA will send a letter to the president of UNITE/HERE to reiterate our original message of support and to convey the results of our decision and its rationale. We will offer to distribute their literature at the cooperative book exhibit. We will invite representatives of the union to address the business meeting. Further, some time will be allocated when members (en masse) could join the picket line. Members might wish to express their support of labor by contributing to the Unite/Here fund at the following address: Local 2 Solidarity Fund, 209 Golden Gate Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94102. The Board and the Secretariat have committed themselves to seek ways to improve future contracts to provide more flexibility and more protection in the event of labor action. We are organizing an offsite meeting during our convention and invite members to attend and share their opinions, ideas and suggestions about ways to address these difficult situations. The members of the board recognize and sympathize with the convictions of many members. They reviewed all the ideas, concerns and suggestions received from MESA members, via phone, e-mail and petition, over the past days. The board discussed a poll of the membership but decided this was not practicable at this late point in the process. Their own discussion was long and at times passionate. In the end, based on the analysis provided here, the eight Board members (one member of the board resigned prior to yesterday's discussion) decided unanimously that they could not expose MESA to the severe financial damage that the option of courting a lawsuit or buying out the contract would involve. They have found many of the communications from members very useful, however, and would welcome further thoughts and reactions.
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