April 30, 2012

While Seattle’s downtown hotel sector sets for widely projected growth and profitability, its workforce endures poverty wages, pain and injury from unsustainable management practices. Our Pain, Their Gain: The hidden costs of profitability in Seattle’s downtown hotels reveals how industry practices keep workers in poverty with low wages and inadequate health benefits, requiring public dollars to subsidize their health care costs, their food and housing. This report, just released by Puget Sound Sage, a regional economic policy advocacy center, is available at: www.pugetsoundsage.org/hotelreport

“We found that hotel workers, who are mostly people of color and family breadwinners, not only earn wages at poverty level,” said Howard Greenwich, research director for Puget Sound Sage. “They endure pain and injury at higher rates than almost any other industry—including construction and coal mining. Meanwhile, industry profits are rising rapidly.”

Economic hardships and hazardous conditions endured by hotel employees are disproportionately borne by workers of color and by immigrants. Pain and injury are disproportionately borne by women, who comprise most of the hotel housekeeping workforce. While living paycheck to paycheck, some even qualify for public assistance. Yet, the work is grueling. A typical housekeeper cleans 15 rooms a day, strips over 500 pounds of soiled linen, replacing it with 500 pounds of clean linen, lifting a mattress over 60 times a day.

“I’ve seen people quit hotel jobs because their bodies can’t take the work,” said housekeeper Jian Hua Wu. “And it’s not just hard; it’s dangerous. When workers are forced to go faster and faster, we get hurt.” More worker quotes are available at: www.pugetsoundsage.org/hotelreport

King County Councilmember and Chair of the county’s Board of Public Health, Joe McDermott, calls on elected officials and the privatesector to set the region’s tourism and hospitality industries on the right path. “This report sets forward principles and a framework and we’re going to study these and see if we can’t take the “high road” in hotel and hospitality—a sector that’s set to expand rapidly in the near future,” said McDermott. “A healthy region sustains its families, invests in workers and supports businesses that help create healthy communities,” he said.

Click here to download the report.

Click here to learn more.

Today, workers at Seattle’s Hyatt at Olive 8, a non-union hotel, bravely stepped forward and joined thousands of Hyatt workers nationwide to organize for a better future for themselves, their families, and their community.

King County Councilmembers Larry Gossett and Joe McDermott, Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata, Port Commissioner Rob Holland, and twenty community allies stood with the workers asking the Hyatt at Olive 8 for a fair process to organize. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn also sent a powerful letter of support.

Hyatt has singled itself out as the worst employer in the national hotel industry. Hyatt has abused its workers, replacing longtime employees with minimum wage temporary workers and imposing dangerous workloads on those who remain. Hyatt housekeepers have high rates of injury.

Hyatt workers suffer from a glaring lack of respect. On a hot summer day in downtown Chicago, with temperatures climbing above 100 degrees, Hyatt turned heat lamps on striking workers and only stopped when reports started surfacing in the press. At the Hyatt Regency in Santa Clara, California, two housekeepers, Martha and Lorena Reyes, were humiliated on the job.

Workers at the Hyatt at Olive 8 in Seattle are joining the movement of workers in Indianapolis, San Antonio, Scottsdale, Santa Clara, San Francisco and Long Beach calling on Hyatt to accept a fair process to enable them to choose whether or not to join a union without employer intimidation. Hyatt has refused.

Please join us in standing with them as they take the bold step of speaking up publicly to end the mistreatment they experience at work. Stay tuned for ways you can help by liking “Hyatt Hurts” on Facebook. Also, check out www.hyatthurts.org for more information.

Support the workers at the Space Needle in their fight for their jobs. Like their struggle on Facebook, and join us at the:

RALLY!

@ the Space Needle

(Broad Street)

Thursday, March 15
3pm to 4pm

Each year, the Space Needle attracts over 1 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations in Washington State. The Sky City Restaurant at the Needle is the most visited restaurant in Seattle, and costs visitors over $60 a plate. Accordingly, wages and benefits for workers at the Space Needle are somewhat higher than average service sector jobs. But that may not be for long.

Workers at the Space Needle have been in negotiations with the Space Needle Corporation for many months, where workers are fighting for living wages, benefits, and job security.

In recent bargaining sessions, the Space Needle has asked for the ability to subcontract its workforce, a practice also known as outsourcing. “In other words,” according to Sanjeet Thebe, a server assistant at the Space Needle, “I could be replaced any day with temporary workers making lower wages and no benefits. What kind of a future is that for me and my family?”

Join Space Needle workers in their struggle to fight back. Don’t let the symbol of Seattle stand for poverty! Read more…