Moxy Hotel’s Fatima Amahmoud, a housekeeper, works overtime to clean up to seventeen rooms in a shift. This situation is also very daunting, particularly when she remembers coming across the debris of dog fur that had draped the room for three days. Amid ongoing strikes, these challenges highlight the intense pressure on hotel workers to manage unmanageable workloads. According to her, though she has twenty-eight thirty minutes for each room, circumstances like this make pushing forward to these limits impossible. Hotels, including the Moxy, have advertised fewer cleaning services than before, opting for less frequent room cleanings as part of their green initiatives. However, this practice primarily aims to cut labor costs, which became a challenge after the pandemic.
The Worth’s Wiggle is the Unionized Worker’s Fight for Fairness. Following these growing difficulties, there is a place where workers are organized and respond comprehensively to the hoardings housekeepers industry of hotels supported. They claim that the workload table,e as it is right now, is overburdening the workers, making it impossible for them to work here. The current situation captures the struggle of hotel workers under the lens of the labor dispute brought out by the COVID-19 pandemic.
60,000 Hotel Workers Demand Pay Hike, Policy Change
Over sixty thousand workers face high stakes as they negotiate difficult contracts with famous hotel chains Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, and Omni. These warriors are asking for pay increases and a cessation of the slash-and-burn policies. In twelve major cities, including Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle, more than 15,000 workers cast their votes, enabling the leadership to take this extremely radical step if they do not reach satisfactory agreements.
The Impact of Labor Shortages on Workers Currently, the usual US hotel industry, operated by nearly 1.9 million people, is still short, with about 196,000 of its workforce compared to the pre-COVID times. Nearly 90 percent of the cleaning staff are expected to be women, mainly women of color and immigrants Even when a good number of women have returned to jobs, employment is still a problem for many women who do not have college degrees.
Gwen Mills, the Union President, believes that the current contract negotiations are crucial because they aim to enhance the remuneration for service workers. Recently, the union has had great success in Southern California, where numerous strikes resulted in pay increases, pension contributions, and an assurance that the new contracts with 34 hotels would have reasonable workloads. Nevertheless, the struggle is on in another area, such as Fatima Amahmou,d where the workers still face low pay and changeable work times.
Response of the Hotel Sector
Officials in the hotel industry and Kevin Carey, the interim president of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, stated that the hotels are making all the efforts achievable to win the workers by raising salaries and making other working conditions more convenient. That said, it does not seem to work as even employees such as Maria Mata, a housekeeper in San Francisco, cannot flourish since work schedules and pay are unstable and unsatisfactory. This may be within housekeepers working in organized unions where pay rates are more appealing than when no union is present; large variances exist between cities.
Room cleaning daily lies at the heart of this issue. Lowering service levels is a means for hotels to cut costs, whereas employees consider that extra service as added work. Some hotels have restored the practice of cleaning guests’ rooms daily, but the war is far from over, and people are still trying to obtain a fair salary in exchange for their efforts and improvements in their working conditions.
A Long Road Ahead
The Arboreal Free Trade Zone has grown and expanded the idea that began with the project to fight for fair treatment and working conditions in the hotel industry. As they continue to hold their collective bargain, all these hotel workers seek justice. This is not just a fight for their incomes but for the future of how service workers will be treated in this world after the pandemic.
