Meet (insert name of visible minority woman here). She’s a hotel housekeeper. She makes more than minimum wage, anywhere between $13 and $17 an hour, but has to clean 15 rooms a day, sometimes more.
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Which means she has to work fast, at times being left with little more than 15 minutes to clean a room, according to UNITE HERE Canada, the union representing her. The to-do list for housekeepers is a long one: make beds, scrub and clean the toilet bowl, bathtub and all bathroom surfaces, dust, vacuum, empty the trash and change linens, among other things.
A simple thing like fitted sheets would save her from repeatedly lifting heavy mattresses to make beds.
Long-handled mops and dusters instead of rags would let her clean floors without getting down on hands and knees and to reach high surfaces without climbing on bathtubs.
But disparities between hotels mean those tools aren’t always available, says UNITE HERE
Insert Name of Visible Minority Woman Here is a pseudonym, but her story is not fictitious.
After a summer of rotating strikes at six hotels, about 2,000 of the city’s 5,500 unionized hotel workers will be bargaining for new contracts in the coming year.
Recent contract talks have resulted in hotel workers winning better salaries and pension benefits. But with hotel chains eyeing a fragile economic recovery, the forecast is for more labour strife.
Complicating matters from the union’s point of view is the fact that those bargaining for new contracts work for hotels owned or operated by one of the largest hoteliers on the planet and the biggest hotel owner in Canada, Westmont Hospitality Group.
It’s back-wrenching work. Pushing a heavy cart over carpeted floors adds to the load. Over time, injuries can occur, on occasion leading to permanent disability. Hotel employees are 40 per cent more likely to be injured than workers in other service industries.
In a 2010 study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 91 per cent of more than 600 hotel housekeepers in the U.S. and Canada reported work-related pain 77 per cent said their workplace pain interfered with routine activities 66 per cent took pain medication to get through their daily quota.
According to UNITE HERE, hotel chains have steadily reduced the number of workers providing services to guests since the late 1980s.
Westmont principals are known for their philanthropy and work with charitable organizations, including the Aga Khan Foundation, but the company’s hotels have also been the target of UNITE HERE boycott efforts. And more than a few American film stars have joined employees on the picket line while in town.
Westmont did not respond to NOW’s requests for comment on this story.
Partnerships with major financial institutions and big-time real estate investors have helped Westmont dominate the Canadian hotel industry. Among the corporation’s business associates is InnVest REIT, Canada’s largest hospitality real estate investment trust, which has an ownership stake in 145 hotels in Canada, totalling more than 19,000 rooms.
InnVest says in its recent financial report that it expects an upward trend in occupancy and revenue to continue into 2011.
Additionally, it’s looking to shore up its bottom line through a restructuring that may exempt the company from certain taxes, a move UNITE HERE terms “risky and unnecessary.”
Who’s afraid of Westmont Hospitality Group?
The inside specs of the hotel conglomerate targeted by unions
enzom@nowtoronto.com
