HUFF POST: INDIANAPOLIS — Maria Fajardo has been working as a housekeeper and janitor in Indianapolis hotels since 1987. The job has changed a lot in 24 years, but not for the better. The work is much more difficult than it used to be, and the pay comparatively much less…
The jobs don’t go offshore to India — they go to little-seen labor agencies that provide hotel chains like Hyatt and Marriott with large pools of bottom-rung workers, who are often Latino. As some hotels increasingly rely on these middlemen agencies, the economic effects for blue-collar workers are significant. Wages tend to be lower, and employees often end up working full-time without health insurance, vacation or sick days. Although they’re considered temps, they sometimes work at the same hotel for years on end.
Hospitality work, largely thanks to organized labor, was once a path to middle-class life in America. But downward wage pressures have left many workers in poverty, relying on government subsidies, local charities, and second and third jobs to get by. And despite a jobs crisis and a presidential campaign that ostensibly focuses on the economy, none of the proposals coming out of Washington are aimed at stemming the systematic subcontracting that’s squeezing the country’s working class… (more)
EDITOR: The Watchdog is ashame at how little entry level workers make in his company’s hotel division. Yet they are paid considerably more than the workers provided by agencies that many competitors are using. It is a labor intensive industry struggling to make a buck. And then governments often levy special taxes on hotels to fund local boondoggles, thus drying up earnings and making it even more necessary to keep wages down. More on this soon.
