New York, Sep 12 (EFE).- Hundreds of hotel workers demonstrated in front of New York City Hall on Thursday, some to protest against a new bill requiring hotels to obtain licenses and changes to the system for hiring staff, and others with the opposite aim: to support the measure and provide information about it.
The measure, called the Safe Hotels Act or Intro 991 and introduced last July, would require all New York City hotels to be licensed by the Department of Consumer and Employee Protection, and that front desk and housekeeping staff be employed by the hotel.
Dressed in green, the opponents of the measure were the most numerous and prominent, with signs such as: Intro 991 kills jobs or Save jobs! Say no to Intro 991!
“This dangerous bill imposes arbitrary workplace rules that will add significant costs to hotels, jeopardizing their ability to operate and putting at risk the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers whose jobs depend on hotels,” the Coalition to Protect New York Tourism said today.
Fear of being fired by immigrants
Many Latinos were among the protesters, including Maricela, from Honduras.
“They are trying to prevent agencies (subcontracted companies) from working with hotels. Right now, the ones who are getting the jobs here in the United States are us, the migrants,” says the woman, a supervisor at a hotel and hired by one of those agencies, Global Team, to which she says she is grateful.
At her hotel, Maricela explains, only about 8 people have direct contracts and the other 13 are subcontracted.
Similar stories were heard at the protest, such as that of Flavia Pastuña, who arrived in the city a year ago from Ecuador and praised another agency, Tropical, because they “opened the door” and gave her “the opportunity to work” as a cleaner in a hotel.
Misinformation among workers
In another area of the park opposite the Town Hall, a counter-protest was taking place by the Council of Hotel and Gambling Unions, whose members were dressed in blue.
Union organizers say hotels and subcontracted companies are misleading workers about what the new measure entails.
In that regard, they pointed to a hotel worker retention law passed in 2020 (Local Law 99) that requires hotels to hire such contract workers and pay them a wage equal to or greater than their previous salary.
Sonia Manzor, a Salvadoran woman who works as a cleaner in a hotel in the Big Apple, started out as a contractor and then became a hotel employee, a leap that, she says, scared her but was worth it, and in which the union helped her.
According to Manzor, as a subcontractor she earned $17 an hour and now almost $30, and she also has vacation and sick days.
Last year, New York City’s tourism industry generated $74 billion in economic impact, with more than $48 billion of that coming from direct spending.
