My name is Cathy Youngblood. I work as a housekeeper at the Hyatt Andaz in West Hollywood. There are many positive things about being a housekeeper. I get to meet the world. I have a real bond with the other women I work with. I also take pride in working in a field where I give comfort and pleasure to people when they travel.
There are also challenges to being a housekeeper. Every day the work is exhausting and physically debilitating. And management doesn’t always really listen when we have ideas about how to make the work safer or more efficient.
I care about my job, but also I see how things could be better. That’s why Hyatt needs someone like me on its board of directors. The current corporate officers might have business sense, but I have common sense. They push paper, I do the physical labor.
» Read more about: Hotel Worker Says: Put Me on Hyatt's Board! »
Workers at hotels near LAX on Century Boulevard are supposed to be covered under a 2008 Living Wage Ordinance providing wages of at least $11.97 an hour. A new class action lawsuit alleges that the Holiday Inn LAX willfully violated a host of wage and hour laws — and workers have revealed that conditions at the hotel are unsafe for guests.
UNITE HERE Local 11, who are supporting bartenders, housekeepers, cooks and other Holiday Inn LAX employees, issued a press release on the new class-action lawsuit, that seeks damages for, “back wages, not respecting [employees’] right to take meal breaks, not reimbursing them for expenses incurred while performing their work, and failure to pay them the mandatory ‘Living Wage’ required for all LAX-area hotels.”
Workers allege that they worked over eight hours a day without being paid overtime, their time sheets were tampered with,
» Read more about: LAX Holiday Inn Workers Allege Living Wage Violations »
Seven workers at the Embassy Suites hotel in Irvine have filed a complaint with Cal/OSHA against the parent company, HEI Hotels and Resorts, about the hotel’s so-called safety program. These workers, who are currently in an organizing campaign with UNITE HERE Local 11, say that this program discourages workers from reporting injuries on the job to reach the goal of an “accident-free workplace.”
Now Cal/OSHA is investigating HEI’s “Safety Bingo” program, which offers up to $25,000 or a new car as the grand prize. “Safety Bingo” promotes a blame-the-worker mentality instead of addressing the real hazards that exist.
“They could be using that prize money instead to fix the hazards and protect workers from getting injured in the first place,” says Andrea Nicholls, Health and Safety Coordinator at the L.A. County Federation of Labor, who is assisting the workers throughout the investigation.
This case, if successful, will set a new precedent in California in combatting employer programs that appear to prevent accidents,
» Read more about: Is "Safety Bingo" More Like Safety Russian Roulette? »