Massachusetts strong; Housekeepers under threat

Could the resort industry being using Covid-19 as a stalking horse to stealthily attack its own workforce? That’s what some housekeepers are telling the New York Times. They say the cutback on daily room cleanings, ostensibly for reasons of health, is a cover for permanent job cuts. (Much as Las Vegas casinos used 9/11 as cover for eviscerating payrolls.) The new equation, say housekeepers, is more work per day for less money. Never trust the casino to be above using one person to do the work of four. (Under Columbia Sussex, the Tropicana Las Vegas was an extreme example of this.) Chartres Lodging Group CEO Robert Kline responds, “The vast majority of our customers don’t want us cleaning their room while they are staying with us. They want to know the room is clean when they enter, but once they occupy that room they are saying, ‘Don’t come in.’” To which Unite-Here Vice President Nia Winston says, “Daily room cleaning is required in China and Hong Kong and other places that have successfully contained the virus.”

Although hotels are reopening, they’re slow to call housekeepers back, with 25% still unemployed. The ones who are working aren’t on call as often and, when they are, they come back to dirtier rooms which take longer to clean properly. (Guests who throw Coronavirus-friendly parties in their rooms make the job that much harder.) Nor are hotels allocating more time to clean to compensate for the ‘new normal,’ which is looking a lot like the same old same-old. Josh Herman, vice president of PR at the Fontainebleau in Miami, offered the usual mouthwash: “While the enhanced cleaning protocols are more costly to execute, both in supplies and labor, the health and safety of our guests and team members are always our highest priority.” Adds Hyatt senior veep Frank Lavey, tourists “are returning to Hyatt hotels with new expectations around cleanliness, which includes limiting potential contact points, especially within the guest room.”

Las Vegas and Atlantic City would be well advised to adopt ordinances like San Francisco’s, which requires daily guest-room cleanings (among other measures) unless customers expressly veto it. The hotel industry is fighting this tooth and nail, complaining that its over-leveraged properties would collapse financially if forced to do the right thing. It’s the old, pernicious false equivalency of lives vs. economy. Hotel industry lobbyist Chip Rogers tried to paint Unite-Here as the villain: “Right now there are no profits to split and everyone is losing money. To have these fights now is counterproductive. It’s hurting employees.” The targeting of housekeepers for job cutbacks is also a form of institutionalized racism. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 71% of maids and housekeepers are people of color, many of immigrant extraction. Stick that in your ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ pipe and smoke it.

Oh, and protective gear is said to be in short supply. (Sound familiar?) Housekeepers report having to wear the same mask for a week or to clean while using only one glove. Ofelia Cardeñas cut to the chase: “I see they don’t care about the worker. They care about their bottom line. If they cared, they’d have enough gloves, they’d come see how we are doing.” Not much chance of that.

Casino Candor Dept.: “Other places have fire and water shows and surf shows. Well, our thing is coin slot machines.”—El Cortez GM Adam Wiesberg on the Las Vegas coin shortage.