No Job Name

PROFITS, PAIN, AND PILLOWS: HOTELS AND

HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

Jill Esbenshade

with Micah Mitrosky, Erica Morgan, Marilisa Navarro,

Matthew Rotundi, and Cynthia Vazquez

The accomodations industry is hitting record-breaking proﬁts nationally and locally, often with subsidies

provided by government entities. Globalization is actually contributing to rising employment and a trade

surplus in the tourism industry. However, increasing amenities and new work regimes are causing

deteriorating conditions for many workers. In 2006, hotel workers across the country will be coordinating

contract negotiations. Housekeepers, who make up almost a quarter of the hotel workforce, are the “face” of

the national campaign. Through management interviews, analysis of government data, and a worker

survey, this article provides a more complete picture of the living and working conditions of housekeepers in

San Diego and nationally.

The service sector has long been touted as the new hope for a union

comeback. With the offshoring of data entry, computer programming, call

centers, medical services, and the like, this hope began to dim. However, glo-

balization has actually caused an expansion of the hotel industry in the U.S., with

increasing numbers of international business travelers and tourists. In 2005,

there were ﬁfty million international visitors to the U.S., a ﬁgure that has almost

doubled over the past two decades. Tourism is one of the few industries in the

U.S. that runs a trade surplus. Travel and tourism accounted for 28 percent of all

service “exports” in 2005.

Because of its immobility, hotel workers may have more leverage in their

efforts to organize than other low-wage service workers have seen in recent

years. This proposition will soon be tested. This year, for the ﬁrst time, union

contracts expire at hotels across the country. The Los Angeles Times reports

that, “The potential for a nationwide strike could disrupt business and tour-

ism . . . In addition to Los Angeles, hotel labor contracts expire this year in

Boston, Chicago, Honolulu, New York and Toronto.” According to the Los

Angeles Times, as many as 400 hotels employing 50,000 workers could be

involved in the labor dispute.

In 2007, contracts at several San Diego hotels

will expire.

Room cleaners, known as housekeepers, are emerging as the “face” of the

union campaign.

These workers, who are almost exclusively female and

WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society · 1089-7011 · Volume 9 · September 2006 · pp. 265–292

largely of color, make up nearly one of every four positions in the hotel labor

force. This article explores the basic questions of who these workers are and

what we know about their living and working conditions. Based on manage-

ment interviews, government and industry statistics, and a worker survey, this

article provides a picture of housekeepers in San Diego and nationally. Aside

from being a growing sector of the economy and a potentially vital site of new

union organizing, the hotel industry is also of particular interest because many

hotels are situated on public lands where they receive subsidies from various

government entities. In some sense then it is our own tax dollars that are

helping to create this employment. This article opens with a brief overview

of the vitality of the industry, then looks at management perspectives on a

few key issues, and ﬁnally compares national and local statistics with our

own survey of housekeepers to create a more comprehensive view of these

workers.

The National and Local Hotel Industry

PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated that in 2005, the earnings in the hotel

industry rose 25 percent over the previous year. Bjorn Hanson, a managing

partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers, said, “The last two years were extraordi-

nary.” This remarkable growth in revenues is a result of rising room rates,

especially at the high-end hotels, and particularly on the West Coast.

It is

predicted that in 2006, proﬁts will top $25 billion, breaking the record set in

2000 prior to 9/11.

Almost two million workers are now employed in the accommodation indus-

try.

There are clearly a wide variety of occupations within the industry, ranging

from highly remunerated management positions to the low-wage jobs that make

up the “back of the house.” The top ﬁve positions in terms of numbers of

employed are listed here (Table 1) with their expected growth.

Housekeepers make up by far the largest percentage of any occupation at 23

percent of total hotel employment. This occupation is predicted to increase at a

rate of 17 percent over the ten-year period, about the same as industry employ-

ment generally.

Table 1. The Top Five Positions in the Accommodations Industry in 2004 and Percent Change to 2014

Occupation Employment 2004

(in thousands)

2004 % Percent change

2004–2014

Housekeeping 405 22.5 17

Desk clerks 183 10.2 17.4

Waiters and waitresses 133 7.4 9.5

Maintenance and repair workers 64 3.6 27.2

Cooks 56 3.1 16.7

All occupations 1,796 100 16.9

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

266 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

The San Diego Hotel Industry

San Diego is a prime area for tourism in the U.S. According to the San

Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, twenty-seven million visitors spent $5.8

billion here in 2005. The bureau reports that there are currently 452 hotels and

motels with over 54,000 available rooms in the area. Another 1,500 rooms are

offered through casinos, spas, and bed-and-breakfasts.

According to Ernst and Young’s annual report on the hotel industry, “San

Diego continues to rank as the top-performing market in California and one of

the top-performing markets in the United States in terms of RevPAR.” RevPAR

is the Average Daily Rate (ADR) multiplied by the occupancy rate and is the

industry standard in determining ﬁnancial health. In 2005, San Diego’s hotel

market was second behind San Francisco within California by RevPAR numbers,

although San Diego was experiencing more growth. San Diego also ranked sixth

in the nation.

After the decline that the entire industry experienced following 9/11, ADRs

and occupancy have steadily increased, raising RevPAR. In 2005, San Diego’s

occupancy rate was 72.3 percent while nationwide, the occupancy rate stood at

60.7 percent.

These ﬁgures are especially impressive given that San Diego

County added more hotel rooms than any of the top twenty-ﬁve in 2005.

2006, Ernst and Young estimates that the ADR will rise another 5 percent to

$128 per room and occupancy will also continue to climb, putting San Diego’s

RevPAR over 50 percent above the national average.

The accommodation industry in California in general is experiencing

growth at a faster pace than the industry nationwide. From 1997 to 2003, the

Gross State Product for the accommodation industry grew 25 percent for the

nation, but 30 percent in California.

Obviously, such growth implies an increasing number of jobs in the sector.

The number of housekeeper jobs in California is rising particularly fast. It is

estimated that there are 90,200 people working as maids and housekeepers in

California.

By 2012, it is projected that California will have an estimated

108,100 people in this category.

This is a 19.8 percent increase. The average

employment for all occupations for the state of California is projected to grow

18.6 percent between 2002 and 2012.

Clearly, housekeeping as an occupational

sector is growing at a faster rate than other employment sectors in the state of

California and at a faster rate than the rate for housekeepers nationally.

Moreover, the number of housekeepers in San Diego is rising faster than in

California. The local hotel workers’ union, UNITE-HERE (UNITE, formerly

the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, and HERE,

Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union), estimates

that there are currently 23,815 full-service hotel workers in the county, 2,500 of

whom are unionized.

According to quarterly ﬁgures, from 2002 to 2004, the

number employed in the California accommodation industry increased by 7.68

percent, while San Diego demonstrated a 10 percent increase over the two-year

period.

267ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

Furthermore, the accommodation industry is a heavy contributor to San

Diego’s local economy. For the 2002–2003 period, accommodation ranked as

number seven of the top ten industries with the greatest employment in San

Diego.

Despite the relative importance of the accommodation industry, the

average monthly earnings for this same period amounted to $2,012 per month,

as compared to $3,549 for all economic subsectors, or 57 percent.

Public Land and Expansion

As we have seen, San Diego is one of the leading hotel markets in the

country, and plans for signiﬁcant expansion are underway. Thousands of rooms

are slated for sites on public land or in redevelopment areas. Downtown rede-

velopment areas are controlled by the Center City Development Corporation

(CCDC), a public nonproﬁt entity that administers projects for the San Diego

Redevelopment Agency. The primary task of the CCDC is to serve as a catalyst

in the economic growth of downtown by making public-private partnerships

to facilitate redevelopment projects.

Center City Development Corporation-

approved development takes place in designated Economic Enterprise Zones,

which are deﬁned geographic areas where businesses can claim certain state

income tax savings and other advantages.

Development projects in these areas and on public land, such as new

hotels, are often offered subsidies. These subsidies take multiple forms: tax

increments, state tax credits, net operating loss carry-forward, taxpayer-funded

infrastructure costs, underwritten environmental review, and reduced or

waived city permitting and other fees.

Government entities negotiating low

rent or revenue-sharing agreements are another subsidy. The most egregious

case of this in San Diego was when the city gave $1 annual leases for each of

two hotels being built on bayside property known as Liberty Station. The

hotels where almost all the workers in our study worked, the Holiday Inn on

the Bay (HIOB) and the Manchester Grand Hyatt (MGH), paid the Port

District (on whose land the hotels sit) less than 6 percent of their revenues

last year according to Port District records. This (foregone) public money is

meant to spur economic growth by making potential development feasible,

and is therefore seen by the city or port as an investment. However,

critics believe that the city and other public entities are using taxpayer

money, which could otherwise be used for city services, to support private

enterprise.

Currently, the City of San Diego holds ten hotel leaseholds and the Port

District of San Diego has thirteen more. Port hotels include three with over

1,000 rooms each, with the MGH being the largest with 1,625 rooms. In

addition, six new hotels are planned on city redevelopment land with over 1,500

rooms and another four hotels on Port lands with over 3,500 rooms.

The

military also owns land that is leased to private companies. Another complex

of over 1,000 rooms is planned on navy land that is “considered one of the

best urban building sites on the West Coast,” according to the San Diego

268 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

Union-Tribune.

Together, these developments represent a more than 10

percent increase in available rooms.

Managerial Perspective

Interviews were conducted for the purpose of acquiring a sense of managers’

perspective on issues we were researching through other sources. The three

main interview topics were: ownership, development, and labor supply. Ten

interviews were conducted in March and April of 2006 with managers of hotels

on public land in San Diego. All managers were voluntary participants whose

names and contact information were acquired through public record or through

referrals from other participants. While many topics were discussed, we present

here only some of the ﬁndings on the restructuring of the industry through

ownership arrangements and an increased emphasis on branding.

Ownership

There are several different types of ownership and management arrange-

ments within the hotel industry. The most straightforward of these is when a

hotel is owned and operated by the same company. Another common arrange-

ment, according to managers, is that a hotel is owned by one company,

for example a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust),

and is then operated by

a separate management company, such as Starwood. The same company can

be involved in different arrangements. As one manager stated, “[We] own

most of our hotels, but we do manage a few for owners.” Another manager

stated that it is now unusual for a hotel to be owned and operated by the same

company.

Several of the managers explained the advantages to such specialization. One

manager explained, “For a large company it is better not to have all that capital

tied up in the ownership of the property. Let somebody else tie up their capital

and then they just collect their management fees, percentage of revenue, what-

ever the contract is, it is a much better deal for somebody such as Hyatt,

Marriott, Starwood, whoever it is.” On the other side, there are “real estate

mogul types” who are solely interested in property, as one participant put it.

Hotels are sometimes sold to REITs but current management continues to

operate the facility. One participant said her company had chosen to do this in

order to focus more on its brand name, as she put it, “take on more of a model

like Marriot.” The Marriot has long specialized in management.

Branding and Marketing

As in other industries, shedding some of their capital investments allows

hotels to increase their focus on branding and marketing. Hotel guests are no

longer paying for just a place to spend the night, instead they are also paying for

what the hotel represents: quality of service, amenities, comfort, star level, etc.

269ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

Customers become attached to certain brands and seek out the same hotel chain

in other cities. According to manager interviews, individual hotels must adopt

brand atmosphere and standards, but it is corporate headquarters that market

the brand.

As hotels are forced to market themselves in order to be competitive, they

compete more on the basis of what amenities they provide for their customers.

Coffeemakers, stocked minibars, TVs, toiletries, and other amenities are all

extras that customers have come to expect and that housekeepers must clean or

resupply. High-end hotels may also offer robes, slippers, large-screen TVs,

chocolates on the pillow, etc.

The amenity that has received the most attention is the new luxury bed. The

Westin Hotel & Resorts (a Starwood chain), introduced the ﬁrst branded beds in

1999. According to Andrea Bennett, the travel news writer at Travel and Leisure,

The ﬁrst bed commissioned by a hotel company and given a brand name, the

Heavenly Bed was billed as an “oasis for the weary traveler,” and it looked the

part: a bright white duvet, a down blanket, ﬁve feather-and-down pillows, three

230-thread-count sheets (one sheet is laid over the blanket, a practice known as

triple sheeting), and a custom-designed 12 1/2-inch-thick Simmons mattress

with 900 individual coils. Within one year, Westin had increased its occupancy

rates and had begun the ﬁrst retail bedding operation of any hotel chain, selling

the Heavenly Bed on its Website. To date, 30,000 people have bought merchan-

dise on Westin’s site; 7,000 have bought the entire queen-sized set for $2,565.

These beds created a new area of competition. One of the managers inter-

viewed stressed the importance of these luxury beds, saying that their beds were

an “improvement” on those originated by Westin.

While the new “luxury” beds were installed in all of the hotels at which our

respondents worked, the managers uniformly reported that either there have

been no problems or all problems have been resolved. For example, one manager

described how the new pillow top beds provided an opportunity for management

and housekeeping to compromise: “. . . the last thing I want is injured workers

and so we put a team together and said, how can we make this bed with as little

lifting and moving, what else can we bring into the mix. We came up with a

solution together.” Another manager told us that the new Westin “Heavenly

Beds” were very important to the guests of the hotel, and injuries were uncom-

mon (one back injury per year).

Managers across the board reported that their workers were well paid,

received good beneﬁts, and were an important part of the company. The next

section will look at how government data and housekeepers themselves portray

their compensation and working conditions.

Hotel Housekeepers in San Diego: Government Data and Field Survey

We combed government data sources for all available information on the

hotel industry and particularly housekeepers, which as mentioned is by far the

270 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

largest occupation in the industry. Raw data regarding the Occupational Code

for Housekeepers within the accommodation industry was extracted from each

data source. The data was then imported into statistical analysis software (SPSS)

for analysis. The sample size for each data source is listed below:

• U.S. Census Bureau Public Use Micro Sample (PUMS) 2000, (San Diego

County): n = 247

• American Community Survey (ACS) 2004, (National): n = 504

• U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Current Population Survey:

Annual Social and Economic Survey (ASEC) 2005: (National) n = 303 and

(California) n = 34

While the numbers are small, these surveys are of a representative sample of

each population. Moreover, they are the best government statistics that exist on

housekeeper demographics, beneﬁt receipts, and public assistance. In addition, a

dozen government websites offering prefabricated data tables, or the ability to

create a table through the online data were utilized. These included sites of local,

state, and federal agencies.

Field Survey Methods

In order to obtain information regarding the working conditions of hotel

workers in the San Diego area, we surveyed hotel workers at or near various

downtown hotels and at trolley stops. When we began the survey planning in

January, we were unsure of how much access we would have to workers, as we

did not want to approach them in hotels where we might jeopardize their

employment. In March, we discovered that dozens of workers were picketing in

front of the MGH where we could have full access to workers.

As a result, our sample is skewed. First of all seventy-eight of the ninety-

eight surveyed workers were housekeepers. Therefore, we decided to focus on

their situation, as using only twenty cases of various other occupations would not

be a sufﬁcient sample.

We do not claim that our survey is representative. Of the seventy-eight

housekeepers, only thirteen belonged to a union. This is 17 percent of the

sample. While this percentage seems small, it actually signiﬁcantly overrepre-

sents unionized workers in the San Diego hotel industry. According to UNITE-

HERE Local 30, the union represents approximately 11 percent of workers in

the full-service industry countywide.

While we compare union and non-union workers, this is particularly prob-

lematic. The sample is mainly from two hotels and, therefore, may be biased by

the idiosyncrasies of these hotels. Of the sixty-ﬁve nonunion housekeepers,

ﬁfty-eight are from the MGH. Of the thirteen unionized housekeepers, ten were

from the HIOB.

The MGH was built in 1992. It is operated by the Hyatt chain, but the

owner Manchester Resorts is the ofﬁcial employer according to Port documents.

271ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

The MGH is one of the higher-end and largest hotels in the city. It is a four-star

hotel with over 1,600 rooms. Standard rooms are priced at $195–$429 and suite

prices range from $600 to $3,250. Its revenues for 2005, according to data

obtained through the Port District, were over $162 million.

The HIOB is a smaller, older, and lower-category hotel. Global chain Inter-

Continental Resorts operates the hotel under an agreement with the property’s

REIT owner FelCor. Built in 1969, it has 600 rooms with standard rooms renting

for $119–$199 and suite rents ranging from $299 to $499. It is a three-star hotel

and had revenues of $39.6 million according to Port District records.

While the MGH only has 2.7 times as many rooms as the HIOB, its

revenues were over four times as much. We would therefore expect wages and

beneﬁts at the MGH to be higher than at the HIOB, all other things being

equal. On the other hand, we know that unionized workers generally receive

higher wages and beneﬁts. As you will see, these factors nearly evened out pay

and beneﬁts, except in the area of health care where unionized workers fared

better despite the fact that they came from a less proﬁtable hotel.

In terms of our overall statistics, almost all workers were from either a

unionized hotel or one of the highest-end hotels in the city. We, therefore, are

conﬁdent that the statistics we present in terms of wages, beneﬁts and living conditions

are more favorable than the actual situation that most housekeepers face in San Diego.

In other words, we believe the statistics in these areas are best-case scenarios. This is

conﬁrmed by the fact that the wages we found are considerably higher than

government data sources indicate is the case.

In terms of working conditions and pain, again these are unionized and

high-end hotel workers so we might expect this study to underestimate these

areas as well. However, the fact that ﬁfty-four of the seventy-eight workers were

interviewed during a protest over working conditions cannot be overlooked. We

recognize that this likely skewed results toward more complaints of harder conditions and

pain than would otherwise have been obtained. However, the numbers we found are

very much in line with national studies on this subject.

Following is a look at housekeepers in San Diego. For each area, we ﬁrst

present our analysis of government statistics and other relevant sources and

then the results of our own ﬁeld survey. The section ends with a subsection on

the MGH. Given that 83 percent of the survey respondents were from the

MGH, we felt it was important to tell the workers’ story. In order to under-

stand the situation better, we conducted in-depth interviews with two workers

and a member of the nonproﬁt that supported their protest. It should be noted

that we did request an interview with management at the MGH but they

declined.

Demographic Proﬁle: Who Are the Workers?

Government Data. The vast majority of San Diego housekeepers are immi-

grants, as opposed to their national counterparts. San Diego hotel housekeepers

are primarily Mexican women with little formal education and low English-

272 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

speaking abilities. Table 2 gives a comprehensive view of the workers according

to gender, age, race, ethnicity, citizenship, education, and English ﬂuency.

On a national scale, over 70 percent of housekeepers report being born in

the U.S. while this ﬁgure is less than 20 percent in San Diego. It should be noted

that other national data sources on housekeepers show much higher rates of

foreign-born, noncitizens, and Hispanic than those in the table.

In all sources

of nationwide data, however, the majority of housekeepers are non-white and are

citizens with a signiﬁcant minority being foreign-born.

Table 2. Demographic Proﬁle of National and San Diego County Housekeepers

San Diego County

N = 247 (%)

National

N = 504 (%)

Sex Male 10.9 10.5

Female 89.1 89.5

Age group 15–19 5.3 13.1

20–24 7.7 11.7

25–34 28.7 19.8

35–44 34.0 28.8

45–64 21.4 23.9

65+ 2.8 2.8

Race/ethnicity Non-Hispanic white 6.9 47.6

Non-Hispanic black 5.7 21.4

Asian/Paciﬁc Islander 10.9 6.5

American Indian/Alaskan Native 1.2 2

Hispanic, any race 74.5 20.4

Other 0.8 2

Citizenship Citizen by birth or naturalization 40.1 81.7

Noncitizen 59.9 18.3

Place of birth United States 17.4 72.2

Philippines 9.3 N/A

Mexico 63.6 11.3

Caribbean N/A 3.8

South America N/A 0.8

Europe N/A 2.0

Asia N/A 6.5

Central America 4.0 2.6

Other

5.7 0.8

Ability to speak English (for

foreign-born)

Very well 16.8 30.2

Well 29.9 20.1

Not well 35.0 35.8

Does not speak English 18.3 13.2

Educational attainment Less than high school 64.4 51.6

High school degree 22.3 33.1

Vo/Tech/Bus school degree N/A 6.9

Some college, no degree 6.9 5.0

Associate’s degree 2.4 1.6

Bachelors degree and higher 4.0 1.8

Source: U.S. Census Bureau Public Use Micro Sample from 2000 Census; American Community Survey

2004.

For San Diego County, “Other” includes all areas except the U.S., Mexico, Central America, and the

Philippines.

Sample size for San Diego is 197 and for national is 159.

273ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

Three-quarters of housekeepers in San Diego identify themselves as His-

panic, of which 88 percent are Mexican. The second largest group (11 percent)

identify themselves as Asian and 82 percent of these are Filipino. Also, only

about 35 percent of housekeepers have a high school degree. By comparison,

29 percent of persons in San Diego County reported Hispanic/Latino origin

in 2004 and 83 percent of people over the age of twenty-ﬁve reported having

a high school degree.

Hence, the San Diego housekeeping population is sig-

niﬁcantly more Hispanic and less educated than the general San Diego

County population. Also, housekeepers are 90 percent female in San Diego

and nationally, and San Diego housekeepers are older than their national

counterparts.

The subject of worker ethnicity arose in our manager interviews as well.

Managers most often use word-of-mouth hiring for back-of-the-house posi-

tions. Although one manager insisted that concentration of particular ethnicities

in different positions was a matter of personal taste of applicants, employee

referral systems are well known for producing “ethnic clumping.”

In terms of family type, San Diego housekeepers are more than twice as

likely to be married (64 percent vs. 27 percent) and far less likely to be single

mothers (19 percent vs. 50 percent) compared to their national counterparts. In

addition, San Diego housekeeper families also tend to be larger than house-

keeper families at the national level. Sixty-three percent of housekeepers in San

Diego reported having children under the age of eighteen in the household.

Field Survey. Our ﬁeld survey found much the same demographic proﬁle for San

Diego housekeepers as that in the government data. In our sample, 96 percent of

housekeepers were female with 4 percent (three cases) being male housekeepers,

possibly housemen (those who work in housekeeping but restock carts rather than

clean rooms). Our entire sample was either Latino (92 percent) or Asian (8

percent). As shown in the government data, Mexico was by far the leading country

of birth followed by the Philippines. Figure 1 represents our ﬁndings on ethnicity.

In terms of marital status, two-thirds were either married or lived with their

partner. However, over 80 percent were supporting children. The average

number of children was 2.6. The workers in the survey were older than the

statistics for both the U.S. and San Diego. Only 11 percent of the sample were

aged below thirty-ﬁve, with 70 percent aged from thirty-ﬁve to ﬁfty-four.

Income and Wages

Government Data. In 1999, 98.8 percent of housekeepers in San Diego reported

a personal income of less than $35,000.

The majority, 64 percent, reported

working full time (32 hours or more).

At the national level, 80.4 percent of

housekeepers reported a personal income of $35,000 or less, with 57 percent

reporting full-time employment.

Table 3 displays speciﬁc hotel positions and their average pay per hour. As

shown in the chart, San Diego consistently pays more than the national average

274 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

with the exception of food preparation workers and janitors. Housekeeping staff

are paid an average of $0.22 more per hour in San Diego.

It is also clear that

ﬁrst-line managers of janitorial and housekeeping staff make far more than the

average hotel employee.

At ﬁrst glance, it seems as if San Diego’s housekeepers are faring better than

their national counterparts. Unfortunately, personal income ﬁgures do not tell

the entire story. According to the Center on Policy Initiatives’ (2005) study,

Making Ends Meet, a one-adult or two-adult family with two children requires a

minimum of $52,000 per year to meet basic needs in San Diego.

Given the fact that 46 percent of housekeeper families in San Diego have

two or more children under the age of eighteen, it is clear that most are living

below minimum sustenance levels.

Three-quarters report family income below

$50,000.

In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 20 percent

Mexico

80%

Philippines

United States

Other Latin

American countries

Figure 1. Country of Birth of San Diego Housekeepers, Field Survey.

Table 3. Wages for Hotel Workers: San Diego County and Nationwide, 2004

Position Median wage:

San Diego

Median wage:

nationwide

Cooks 9.95 9.47

Food preparation workers 7.98 8.12

Food servers 8.39 8.08

Dishwashers 7.94 7.41

Dining room attendants 7.91 7.17

Housekeeping 8.39 8.17

Janitors 8.86 9.19

First-line managers of housekeeping

and janitorial employees

14.79 14.45

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment, Hours, and Earnings.

275ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

of housekeeper families in San Diego are living below the federal poverty line,

deﬁned as an income of $17,029 for a family of four.

Clearly, housekeeper

families in San Diego are struggling to afford even a basic lifestyle in this

prosperous city.

Field Survey. The workers in our survey were better paid than the workers in

government statistics for housekeepers locally or nationally. As mentioned pre-

viously, this is accounted for by the fact that almost all of them worked at a

large four-star hotel or a unionized hotel. The median wage in our survey was

$10.63 an hour. There was very little difference between the two groups of

workers; as explained in the methodology section, we believe that the fact that

the nonunion hotel was newer, larger, higher-end, and had four times the

revenues explains why the wages were almost exactly the same as at the union-

ized hotel. Moreover, the unionized workers’ were in the middle of contract

negotiations and, in fact, received a retroactive 30¢ pay raise shortly after the

surveys. An additional 30¢ was given in May, raising the wage to almost 60¢

above the nonunion workers.

We also did not ﬁnd a strong correlation between wages and years worked.

While everyone’s wages were considerably lower when they started, they had

risen to a fairly ﬂat level. It appears that wages rise after an initial training

period to a fairly standard range. Workers’ wages did not appear to rise as

much with their time of employment as they did across the board for the

entire housekeeping staff. The lowest wage was $8.50 and the highest $13.43,

despite the fact that 20 percent of the sample had worked as housekeepers for

over ten years.

Even though these workers are relatively well paid for housekeepers, very

few made enough to meet their basic needs. According to the study by the

Center on Policy Initiative, a single adult in San Diego with no dependents

needs to make $12.48 an hour working full-time to cover their basic

expenses.

Only 12 percent of our sample made this wage or above. However,

of these over half supported two children. This leaves only 5 percent of our

sample who are, in fact, supporting only themselves on a wage of $12.48 or

more.

Further analysis of the data shows that there are seven additional cases in

which the housekeeper was married or living with a partner and their partner

worked full-time and they had at most one child to support. All the other

two-earner households had at least two children and did not make the $12.61

necessary to meet the basic needs of a two-adult, two-child family in San Diego.

Therefore, only eleven cases out of seventy-eight appear to be making a self-

sufﬁciency wage (Figure 2).

The situation might be improved by tips. But only 53 percent of workers said

they received any tips at all and most of these said that it varied and there was no

reliable amount. The largest number mentioned—by only one worker—was $40

a week. The rest ranged down from there. Such small overall tips would not have

much impact on the above estimation.

276 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

It should also be pointed out that these ﬁgures assume workers are working

full time; part-time workers would of course be worse off. Slightly over 90

percent of our sample was, in fact, working full-time.

Beneﬁts

Government Data. The most important beneﬁt that most workers receive from

their employer is health insurance. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data show

that full-time workers are more than ﬁve times as likely to have health insurance

through their employer than part-time workers (in 2005, 66 percent vs. 12

percent). Unionized workers are also 70 percent more likely to have health

insurance through their employer than nonunion workers (83 percent vs. 49

percent in 2005). Among service workers, only 48 percent participate in

employer-sponsored health insurance as opposed to 70 percent of goods-

producing workers.

Company size also has a signiﬁcant effect on employee health coverage. In

2005, 65 percent of workers in businesses with 100 or more employees had

health coverage through their employer as opposed to 43 percent of workers in

smaller businesses.

Also, it may be that employers offer health insurance but

at rates that workers cannot afford. In 2005, the average monthly employee

contribution for an individual health-care plan was $68.96, and for a family

plan it was $273.

California housekeepers actually participate in employer-sponsored health

insurance at a slightly lower rate than private-sector employees in general, 50

percent versus 53 percent.

However, they are far above their national coun-

terparts as can be seen in Table 4. A small part of this difference can be explained

by the fact that California housekeepers are slightly more likely to work full-

time, as discussed earlier. In most cases, the employer or union covered a portion

of the health insurance premiums.

Field Survey. In our survey, we found much higher rates of health coverage for

both workers and their families. This is almost surely because workers came

14%

86%

Salary to meet

basic needs

Below salary to

meet basic needs

Figure 2. Percentage of Workers Making Enough to Cover Basic Needs Wage, Field Survey.

277ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

from very large and/or unionized employers which are more likely to offer

medical insurance, as discussed. Almost all employees stated that they have

health insurance. The vast majority stated that they receive health insurance

from their employer. Of those who responded to receiving health insurance

from their employer, about half have coverage for their families. The monthly

premiums vary, from $14 to $300, with the average monthly cost of the

premium being $81.55 (Table 5). Those with insurance that is not covered by

the employer mostly stated that they do not receive insurance from their

employer because it is too expensive and generally receive their insurance from

Healthy Families, Medi-Cal, or their spouse (about 10 percent of those

surveyed).

Comparing union and nonunion workers, we see that the unionized workers

were more likely to have health insurance, but less likely to get it through their

employer. However, they obviously had an alternative source of coverage

because all were insured. Also, premiums were lower for union workers even

though the insurance was more likely to cover their family. The average monthly

payment for union workers was just over one-third of those for nonunion

housekeepers.

Again, because of the nature of the hotels where almost all surveyed

housekeepers worked (either over 1,000 employees or unionized) almost all

employees received paid time off and there was little difference between the

two groups. Over 90 percent of respondents received paid sick, vacation, and

holidays.

Although workers received all paid days, they were not always able to avail

themselves of these beneﬁts. Some workers commented on how managers make

it difﬁcult for workers to utilize their days off. One worker mentioned how

understafﬁng interfered with her vacation. “I took a ﬁve day vacation and they

called me last night to see if I can come back because they need me.”

Table 4. Medical Beneﬁts for Housekeepers National and California, 2005

Beneﬁt Housekeepers in

California (%)

Housekeepers

nationwide (%)

Health Insurance 64.7 50.8

Participating in employer-sponsored health

insurance (or through union)

50 35

Employer of union pays insurance 0 5.9

Employer or union pays part of insurance 41.2 26.1

Source: ASEC 2005.

Table 5. Health Insurance Coverage Among Field Survey Respondents

Beneﬁt Overall Union Nonunion

Has health insurance 93% 100% 92%

Participates through employer 87% 77% 90%

Family coverage 51% 73% 46%

Average monthly premium $81.55 $32 $89

278 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

Public Assistance

Government Data. Because most housekeepers’ salaries do not cover basic needs,

many rely on some form of public assistance to help their families survive.

Figure 3 shows housekeepers’ receipt of public assistance for themselves and

their families nationally and in California, according to ASEC data.

This is a conservative estimate as the ACS shows much higher receipts

among housekeepers nationally for the few programs it covers. Except for

school lunches, California housekeepers and their families are less likely to

receive public assistance than their national counterparts. This can be partially

explained by their immigrant status and how eligibility for such beneﬁts is

determined.

Nationally, 48.5 percent of housekeepers received at least one type of assis-

tance mentioned in the ﬁgure and 55.8 percent said they received some form of

public assistance. In California, 53 percent received at least one form of the listed

services, while 59 percent stated that they received some form of assistance.

Field Survey. We found similar numbers in our own survey. However, in our

survey not many of the housekeepers were willing to answer questions about

public assistance. The public assistance programs we asked about are: Tempo-

rary Assistance for Needy Families/Aid to Families with Dependent Children

(TANF/AFDC), food stamps, Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Section 8

Housing, subsidized housing, Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, and free school

0.0%

5.0%

10.0%

15.0%

20.0%

25.0%

30.0%

35.0%

40.0%

Food stamps Medicare Medicaid WIC Free lunch

pe of public assistance

California

Nationwide

Figure 3. Use of Public Assistance by Housekeepers: California Versus the Nation.

Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Current Population Survey: Annual Social and

Economic Survey (ASEC), 2005.

279ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

lunches. Of the seventy-eight total respondents we surveyed, only thirty-three

answered any of this set of questions. Of these, 48.5 percent received some type

of public assistance (because forty-ﬁve people did not answer, this is only 21

percent of the whole sample). The ﬁrst ﬁgure is exactly the same as the national

ﬁgure from ASEC for these beneﬁts.

The types of assistance most utilized are Medi-Cal and WIC and the least

utilized are food stamps, Section 8 Housing, and subsidized housing. Again, this

may reﬂect eligibility requirements and immigration status. Respondents were

clearly hesitant to answer these questions. This is true for government surveys as

well.

One explanation may be that it is looked down upon in the Latino culture

to receive public assistance. Moreover, immigrants are often maligned by the

broader society for taking public assistance.

Housing

Government Data. The San Diego housing market is among the highest in the

nation. In January 2006, the median home price in San Diego was $508,000.

Figure 4 shows the breakdown of home ownership for housekeepers versus

nonhousekeepers in 2000.

Housekeepers in San Diego have just over 50 percent of the rate of home

ownership as other residents of the county and of the country.

San Diego housekeepers are also paying signiﬁcantly more for their housing

in comparison to their national counterparts. The average monthly housing

costs for the country were $485 while for San Diego it was $815.

0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

San Diego housekeepers* San Diego County Nationwide

Figure 4. Home Ownership Percentage, 2000.

*Reﬂects home ownership by the housekeeper or a member of the household.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau State & County QuickFacts and U.S. Census Bureau PUMS 2000.

280 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

The high cost of housing is forcing many San Diego housekeeper families to

squeeze into smaller accommodations despite the fact that their family size is

traditionally larger. Over three-quarters of housekeepers report the number of

bedrooms in their homes as two or fewer despite the fact that 11 percent of San

Diego housekeepers report the presence of more than one family in the home.

The conclusion is that housekeeper families in San Diego are living in cramped

quarters and are spending a large portion of their earnings to merely put a roof

over their heads.

Field Survey. We found a slightly higher rate of home ownership than the

government statistics show for housekeepers in San Diego, reﬂecting the higher

wages of this sample. Still, homeownership lags far behind the rate for San

Diego residents in general (37 percent compared to 55 percent). The average

household payment (rent or mortgage) was $997, with payments for the 61

percent who rent averaging $830.

Housekeepers, as expected, lived in small homes, with 64 percent of the

surveyed housekeepers having two bedrooms or less. Moreover, housekeepers

had to share their space with large numbers of people. As was found in govern-

ment statistics on San Diego, 11 percent of our sample had more than one family

living in a household. Moreover, when comparing the number of bedrooms to

the number of household residents, most housekeepers had multiple residents in

every bedroom. Also, 73 percent of those surveyed have at least one child living

in their household, with a third having three or more children in the home.

While not giving a residence in Tijuana, several housekeepers expressed that

they live at least part time on the other side of the border, sometimes going back

on days off to be with their children. Manager interviews conﬁrmed this trend

saying that as much as 20 percent of their workforce lives in Tijuana. Two hotels

mentioned offering Mexican health-care insurance.

Transportation

Government Data. More than one-third of San Diego housekeepers reported

using some form of public transportation to get to work.

The mean commute

time to work reported by workers in San Diego was 25.3 minutes in 2000.

For

housekeepers, the average commute time was twenty-seven minutes each way.

This was 30 percent longer than their national counterparts who commuted

nineteen minutes each way on average.

Moreover, almost half of San Diego

housekeepers commuted upwards of thirty minutes each way to work.

Field Survey. The average commute time in our ﬁeld survey was thirty-eight

minutes, considerably higher than that found in government statistics for house-

keepers and for San Diego residents in general. In terms of mode of transpor-

tation, while 26 percent of those surveyed commute by car, 64 percent of

participants stated that they rely on public transportation, and the other 10

percent walk, bike, or carpool.

281ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

Health and Safety

Government Data and Published Reports. Hotel work, while not the most danger-

ous, has higher rates of injury nationwide than other service sectors, particularly

for housekeepers. According to an analysis based on eighty-seven unionized

hotels nationwide, there is a 61 percent higher risk of injury to housekeepers

than any other hotel employee. Moreover, hotels have a higher rate of workplace

injury than the service sector in general, 5.9 percent compared to 4.2 percent.

A separate data set analyzed by the same study proﬁled the types of injuries

and illnesses suffered by 3,716 hotel housekeepers at 102 unionized hotels over

a two-year period (2002–2004). The most common types of injuries sustained by

these employees are sprains and strains. The body part most often injured is

the back.

The combination of increased room amenities and understafﬁng leads to

poor working conditions for hotel housekeepers.

The numbers of housemen,

those who supply clean linen to housekeepers and help with other heavy tasks,

was cut by 33 percent between 1999 and 2003 and many of their duties have

been shifted to housekeepers.

Increased room amenities include the intro-

duction of luxury beds, as discussed in the previous section. These beds exceed

the National Institute Occupational Safety and Health’s safe lifting index

because of the weight of the mattress and low positioning of the bed.

More-

over, the addition of duvet covers, more pillows (ﬁve to six), and more sheets

(three) means that changing beds takes up more of a housekeepers’ workday.

Even if it takes a housekeeper only twelve minutes to change all of these and

she changes only ﬁfteen beds a day, three hours are spent on the task. The

New York Times reported that many housekeepers are changing twenty-ﬁve

beds and thus spending four to ﬁve hours on the task, lifting mattresses 150 to

200 times a day.

Because of these conditions, there is a high incidence of work-related

pain. The study mentioned also compiled three different surveys of house-

keepers conducted in major cities across America and Canada including

Boston, Los Angeles, Toronto, Las Vegas, and San Francisco. According to

these surveys, the percentage of hotel housekeepers who experienced work-

place pain range from 77 percent to 91 percent.

Of the hotel housekeepers

who reported pain, 65 percent took pain medication and over 60 percent

visited a doctor.

Field Survey. In our survey, we also found high levels of injury and pain. Forty-

six percent of respondents stated that they had been hurt at least once while

working at a hotel. The most frequent injury reported was to the back, followed

by the arms. Sixty-four percent of the respondents who had been hurt on the job

did not take time off. Of these employees, 56 percent responded that they had

received worker’s compensation while the remainder did not. Ninety-four

percent of those that were hurt at their job reported the incident to the hotel and

88 percent reported seeing a doctor for the injury. Eighty percent said the doctor

282 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

visit was covered by their job. Unionized housekeepers were less likely to be hurt

on the job with 38.5 percent responding that they had been hurt as opposed 48.4

percent of nonunion workers.

When asked if they had experienced pain in the last four weeks that they

believed was related to their jobs, almost all workers responded that they had

some pain with over half experiencing severe pain in some area of their body.

Our survey results were very similar to those referenced above. Overall, 88.5

percent of respondents experienced at least mild pain in some area of their body,

while 83.3 percent experienced at least moderate pain somewhere, and 53.9

percent experienced severe pain. Figure 5 shows the distribution and kinds of

pain experienced by the workers in speciﬁc areas of the body.

While most of the housekeepers experienced pain, the nonunionized house-

keepers were signiﬁcantly more likely to experience it. At least half of the union

workers experienced no pain in each of the areas (bodily, neck, upper or lower

back, or headaches). More than half of the nonunion workers experience mod-

erate or severe pain in each of these categories.

Changing Working Conditions

Field Survey. Most of those surveyed found their work harder than when they

began working as housekeepers. Table 6 shows the speciﬁc tasks and the

response of union and nonunion workers as to questions of whether these tasks

have changed in nature.

As noted above, both union and nonunion housekeepers say that cleaning

beds has become more difﬁcult since when they began their jobs. The house-

keepers state that this task is harder because of the increased number of sheets

and pillows on the bed as well as a heavier mattress. The housekeepers who feel

50%

39%

14%

15%

37%

34%

58.3

8.3

21%

22%

25.90%

31%

50%

33%

17%

15%

27%

41%

50%

17%

33%

14%

33%

47%

58%

25%

17%

22%

14%

29%

35%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Union Nonunion NonunionUnion NonunionUnion NonunionUnion NonunionUnion

Bodily pain Neck pain Upper back pain Lower back pain Headache

Severe

Moderate

Mild

None

Figure 5. Survey Respondents That Experienced Pain Related to Their Work in the Last Four Weeks,

Union Versus Nonunion.

283ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

that cleaning bathrooms is harder say that it is because there are more bath-

rooms to clean and the bathrooms are dirtier. Most thought that vacuuming had

remained the same.

In terms of changing conditions, the biggest complaint for nonunion

workers was not the particular tasks but the number of rooms they are required

to clean each day. This could certainly have affected the answers shown above.

Although clearly most understood the question to be about the nature of tasks

and not the number of repetitions, as they did not answer uniformly across

respondents or tasks despite the fact that most were interviewed while protesting

the increased room number. Figure 6 shows the average number of rooms

cleaned by the unionized and nonunionized workers surveyed.

Almost 85 percent of nonunion housekeepers are cleaning fewer than twenty

rooms per day. Half of nonunion housekeepers are cleaning more than twenty-

four rooms per day. This is largely because of the skewed nature of the sample

as described above. However, we do not think union workers would be vulner-

able to this kind of workload increase. In fact, at the Hyatt Islandia—the only

Table 6. Union and Nonunion Workers’ Increased Difﬁculty of

Speciﬁc Work Tasks, Field Survey

Ta s k U n i o n N o n u n i o n

Beds

Harder 58.3 71.7

Easier 0.0 8.3

Same 41.7 20.0

Bathrooms

Harder 50.0 55.0

Easier 0.0 8.3

Same 50.0 36.7

Vacuuming

Harder 23.1 30.0

Easier 15.4 6.7

Same 61.5 63.3

Less than 20 20–24 More than 24

Union

Nonunion

Figure 6. Average Number of Rooms Cleaned Per Day, Field Survey.

284 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

unionized Hyatt in San Diego—the contract speciﬁes the maximum number of

rooms that can be assigned. While this varies between eleven and ﬁfteen

depending on the area of the hotel, it never rises above ﬁfteen. Moreover, if

workers clean ten checkouts in one day (as opposed to stayovers, which are

cleaned less thoroughly) their load is reduced by one room. It is also reduced if

they have to clean rooms on more than two ﬂoors or in different parts of the

hotel as it takes extra time to move between areas. Furthermore, numbers are

reduced during summertime. The new HIOB contract drops the maximum

number of rooms from sixteen to ﬁfteen, with twelve checkouts resulting in an

additional reduction of one room.

The Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel and the Thirty-Room Policy

Both the additional amenities and the increased number of rooms assigned

results in increased workloads for housekeepers. In January 2006, management

at the MGH, a nonunionized hotel in downtown San Diego implemented a new

program in which the number of rooms that housekeepers in the hotel cleaned

per day would increase from sixteen to as many as thirty rooms. Under the new

policy, each housekeeper must clean rooms that total ﬁfteen credits per day. A

“checkout” room is worth one credit. A “stayover” room is worth half of a credit.

Therefore, depending on the combination assigned, room numbers ﬂuctuate

with the outer limits being ﬁfteen and thirty.

Under the program outline, a “stayover” is not to be cleaned as thoroughly

as a “check-out,” in which the hotel is preparing for a new guest. Below is a list

from the Hyatt training materials of tasks to be completed during a “stayover.”

Bathroom Bedroom

! Clean Sink and Counter ! Remake Beds

! Clean toilet ! Spray air freshener

! Wipe down bathtub, shower wall

and shower liner

! Empty trash if needed

! Replace or re-hang/refold towels

! Straighten signage if needed

! Fold toilet paper

! Replace amenities if needed

! Empty trash if needed

! Empty and clean ashtray if needed

! Replenish amenities if needed

! Replenish glassware if needed

! Wipe mirror if needed

! Vacuum if needed

! Mop ﬂoor if needed

! Dust if needed

! Replace glassware if needed

Closet

Coffee Stations

! Replenish amenities if needed

! Replace coffee mugs if needed

! Wipe mirror if needed

! Dry or clean coffee pot if needed

! Organize iron and ironing board

if needed

! Replenish coffee and condiments if

needed

! Wipe coffee station if needed

285ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

All of this is to be done in ﬁfteen minutes or less. “If needed” tasks are left

to the housekeepers’ discretion. However, if an area is dirty or the amenities

used or a guest makes a request, such as having the bathroom ﬂoor mopped,

the housekeeper must complete the task. She may be able to get a full credit

if enough tasks must be done but needs to wait for a supervisor’s approval,

which can take up to half an hour to receive. For checkouts, all the tasks

must be completed and the sheets must be changed in a thirty-minute time

frame.

According to the MGH management, although the housekeepers

have more rooms to clean, they actually have less work to do as most rooms are

not being cleaned as thoroughly. The housekeepers experience the change

differently.

A Housekeeper’s Workday

An in-depth interview with Margarita clearly illustrates some of the

issues that have arisen from the policy change, as well as providing a walk

through one housekeeper’s workday. Margarita leaves her house at 6:45 a.m.

to go to work. It takes her forty-ﬁve minutes one way on a bus and a trolley

to arrive at the MGH Hotel. She arrives at work at 7:30 a.m. and changes

into her work uniform. At 8 a.m., she enters a debrieﬁng meeting for the

day along with the other housekeepers. She begins cleaning rooms at

8:15 a.m.

For a checkout, she begins by changing the sheets and pillowcases and

cleaning out the trash. She then enters the bathroom and scrubs the toilet, the

sink, the bathtub, and the ﬂoor. Margarita changes the towels in the bathroom,

then mops the ﬂoor. Once the bathroom ﬂoor has dried, she must vacuum it to

ensure that any hair or dust is removed. She ﬁnishes the room by dusting the

furniture, windows, and vacuuming the bedroom rug. She also replaces amenities.

When rooms need more attention, Margarita will often skip her ten-minute break

in the morning. She does not want to skip it but feels pressure from the managers

to complete her assigned rooms for the day, although it is extremely difﬁcult for

her. Sometimes, the only rest that she has is her thirty-minute lunch and her

ten-minute break in the afternoon, which the Hyatt is required by law to give to

its housekeepers.

Margarita tries to clean as many of her assigned rooms as possible during

the morning. She ﬁnds that her body becomes very tired in the afternoon

because of the workload. At the end of the day, she must ﬁll her cart with

supplies to clean rooms the following day. If she ﬁnishes her room cleaning

before the end of her workday, at 4:10 p.m., she takes her morning break and

afternoon break if she has skipped one of these in order to ensure the comple-

tion of her quota.

Margarita, who has been working as a housekeeper for twenty years, cleaned

sixteen rooms a day before the room increase. She says that until the new room

policy, she cleaned rooms as if they were a “checkout” every day. Since “stay-

286 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

over” rooms are cleaned much less, rooms are much more difﬁcult to clean when

the guests do check out. A great deal of dust and dirt accumulates, adding to the

amount of time needed to clean the room. She is often unable to ﬁnish the

number of rooms assigned to her. At this point, she has received verbal repri-

mands from the management; however, Margarita fears that the Hyatt may

begin issuing demerits soon.

Margarita asserts that many “stayover” guests complain that their sheets

are not changed daily and so, sometimes the housekeepers do more. Some-

times, the guest speaks directly to the housekeeping department or manage-

ment. Margarita argues that the managers blame the housekeepers by saying,

“maybe she forgot” or “I’ll speak with her.” They do not explain the room

change policy. Margarita “hates” this because she believes that the guests think

that she is not doing her job correctly when she sees them again. In addition,

Margarita says that because the rooms are not as clean, her tips have been

affected. Before the room increase, she often received a $5 tip. Now, she

sometimes receives $1–$2 dollar tips and, frequently, she does not receive any

tips at all for several weeks.

Margarita says that more women are hurting themselves since the room

increase because they are rushing to ﬁnish their assignments during their eight-

hour shifts. This causes the housekeepers a great deal of stress. Margarita has

suffered from tendonitis twice during her employment at the MGH. Her hands

and arms are constantly inﬂamed. Her lower back is in persistent pain as her

duties as a housekeeper require her to bend down continuously throughout the

day (for instance, changing beds and vacuuming). She uses home remedies

to help soothe the pain. “They [The Hyatt Hotel] are physically killing us,”

Margarita says.

Margarita would like to return to cleaning sixteen rooms a day. She believes

that it would also make the other housekeepers happier and that it would better

service the guests. Margarita says about the room change, “It’s unjust. I see it as

being unjust.”

Margarita’s experience points to numerous problems with the thirty-day

policy: stayovers often take more time if dirty or if a guest complains; checkouts

take more time because they are now dirtier than when they were cleaned daily;

tips are down and pain and injuries are up; and housekeepers feel frustrated at

their inability to do their job well.

In October, when the new program was announced, some housekeepers

from the MGH approached La Raza Rights Coalition (LRRC) in order to

protest the room change. Housekeepers and members of the coalition formed

a committee called Hyatt Housekeepers United for Our Rights. In February,

they began picketing outside of the MGH after work for thirty days to protest

the increase to thirty rooms. Management requested that the housekeepers

stop protesting and promised to make attempts to come to a resolution with

the housekeepers. A six-hour meeting took place during which nothing

was resolved. According to a representative of LRRC, the situation is at a

stalemate.

287ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

Conclusion

The San Diego hotel industry is a proﬁtable and growing business. Much of

this expansion is slated to take place on public land or within redevelopment

zones that offer hotel developers and owners a variety of beneﬁts. In fact, next

door to the Holiday Inn is the Port’s Lane Field, for which Manchester Resorts

and the Viejas Tribe are jointly negotiating the rights. A couple of weeks after

the thirty-day picket in front of his current hotel ended, Manchester was selected

by the navy to develop another area by the bay known as the Broadway Complex.

Both sites are among the best pieces of real estate remaining to be developed in

the region. As the Port Chairman said of Lane Field in an interview with the San

Diego Union-Tribune, “The land belongs to the people of California, so we want

to do what’s best for the people of California.”

The people of California

include the housekeepers and other hotel workers who work long, hard hours

contributing to these proﬁtable enterprises.

The vast majority of housekeepers in San Diego do not make enough money

to cover their basic needs. As a consequence of low pay, housekeepers and their

families have to rent more often, crowd into smaller quarters and commute

further than other workers in the county. Half of them also rely on some form

of public assistance to help them survive.

Aside from ﬁnancial well-being, it is clear that housekeepers’ physical well-

being is being greatly compromised. Reports from around the country based on

hotel injury logs and federal Occupational Safety and Health Adminstration

(OSHA) data show that hotel housekeepers are experiencing high levels of injury

and pain. Studies attribute growing physical problems to new luxury beds, which

are heavier and require more pillows, sheets, and accessories to be changed.

These new beds are now commonplace in higher-end hotels.

Our study found that increased room assignments also contributed to rising

physical problems among housekeepers. The case of the MGH in San Diego

clearly illustrates the vulnerability that nonunion workers face in this arena, as

they are not protected by a contract that regulates workload issues. Management

claims that workloads are not increasing, despite more rooms being assigned to

each housekeeper, because workers are being asked to clean less in each room.

However, a close examination reveals that housekeepers are required to com-

plete between seven and twenty-six tasks in each room often in a ﬁfteen-minute

period. This gives housekeepers between thirty-ﬁve seconds and 2.2 minutes to

complete each task. For checkouts, housekeepers must complete all twenty-six

tasks in a thirty-minute period, and change the bedclothes, giving only about

one minute per task. Furthermore, the fact that they may have to repeat these

tasks up to thirty times a day makes clear why workers are complaining of high

levels of stress, injury, and pain.

What this article makes clear is that the proﬁts of the industry are coming,

at least in part, at the expense of hotel workers’ ﬁnancial and physical well-being.

As a group, San Diego housekeepers are not paid a sustainable wage and their

health is in jeopardy. Despite the fact that San Diego is among the top markets

288 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

in an industry that has seen extraordinary growth in the past two years, working

conditions for many hotel workers are deteriorating.

Jill Esbenshade is Associate Professor of Sociology at San Diego State Univer-

sity. She is the author of Monitoring Sweatshops: Workers, Consumers and the Global

Apparel Industry and other studies focusing on immigrant workers. All

co-authors are graduate students in the Sociology Department at SDSU.

Address correspondence to Jill Esbenshade, Department of Sociology, San

Diego State University, 5500 Campanile Dr., San Diego, CA 92182. Telephone:

(619) 594-5519. E-mail: [email protected].

Notes

1. Kristen Amicone, Kristen Emory, Anna Arstein-Kerslake, Alicia Patino, Alejandro Zavala, and Alejandra

Garcia, graduate students of San Diego State University, assisted with research.

2. ITA, US Ofﬁce of Travel and Tourism Industries, http://tinet.ita.doc.gov/outreachpages/

inbound.exports_2000-2005.html (accessed May 27, 2006).

3. Roger Vincent, “Union Aims to Build Momentum as It Prepares for National Hotel Talks,” Los Angeles

Times,February17,2006.

4. Harold Meyerson, “Taking on Hotels,” Washington Post,January18,2006.

5. Peter Sanders, “Hotel Proﬁts to Be Strong,” The Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition) December 8, 2005,

D2.

6. Business Travel News, “Hoteliers in Driver’s Seat,” June 2005, 1–10.

7. Encyclopedia of American Industries, Hotel and motels, http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/industries/

Service/Hotels-Motels.html (accessed April 22, 2006).

8. Available at: http://www.sandiego.org/nav/Travel/ResearchAndReports (accessed April 22, 2006).

9. Ernst and Young, LLP, “The 2006 US Lodging Report,” http://www.ey.com/global/download.nsf/US/

2006_Lodging_Report/$ﬁle/lodgingreport.pdf (accessed April 22, 2006).

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce.

13. Employment Development Department (EDD), California Labor Market Information.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Molly Rhodes, “Looking Back to Look Forward: San Diego Hotel Summary of 2005,” Unite Here! Local

30,April2006.

17. U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns and U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Calculated from Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Data.

18. U.S. Census Bureau, Local Employment Dynamics,2006.

19. The Center City Development Corporation Website, “About CCDC,” http://www.ccdc.com/index.cfm/

fuseaction/aboutCCDC.home (accessed April 1, 2006).

20. The City of San Diego Website, Business Assistance, “Enterprise Zones,” http://www.sandiego.gov/

economic-development/business-assistance/incentive/enterprise.shtml (accessed April 12, 2006).

21. Ernst and Young, LLP, The 2006 US lodging report.

22. Mike Freeman, “SD Hotel Developer Picked for Navy Site; Manchester to Build Broadway Complex,”

San Diego Union-Tribune,April1,2006.

289ESBENSHADE ET AL.: HOTELS AND HOUSEKEEPERS IN SAN DIEGO

23. Roger S. Cline, “Hotel REITs—Promise and Peril as Real Estate Bull Market Ends,” Hotel Online,

Summer 1998, http://www.hotel-online.com/Trends/Andersen/1998_ReitsPeril.html (accessed April 22,

2006).

24. Andrea Bennett, “Battle of the Beds,” Travel and Leisure, June 2005, http://www.travelandleisure.com/

articles/battle-of-the-beds (accessed May 2, 2006).

25. It should be noted that the ASEC data, which is a considerably smaller sample, showed that only 50.5 percent

of housekeepers nationally were born in the U.S. or U.S. territory, or to U.S. parents abroad and only 66

percent are U.S. citizens. These numbers are far lower than what the ACS shows. While the ASEC data for

San Diego was too small to be useful (two cases), the state data shows that 17.6 percent were native-born of

U.S. parentage and 38 percent are U.S. citizens, ﬁgures very close to PUMS for San Diego shown in Table 2.

In terms of race, data from the Working for America Institute of the AFL–CIO show that nationally,

housekeepers are 31 percent white, 34 percent Hispanic, 26 percent black, and 11 percent other (in Working

for America Institute 2002). This is a much higher percentage of Hispanics and lower percentage of whites

than is shown in Table 2.

26. U.S. Census Bureau, State & County QuickFacts,2006.

27. U.S. Census Bureau, PUMS 2000 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Ofﬁce, 2000); U.S. Census

Bureau, American Community Sur vey 2004 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Ofﬁce, 2004).

28. U.S. Census Bureau, PUMS 2000.

29. Ibid.

30. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2004.

31. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment, Hours, and Earnings (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of

Labor Government Printing Ofﬁce, 2005).

32. Basic needs include rent, utilities, food, transportation, child care, health care, phone, clothing and

personal care, and household supplies. Center for Policy Initiatives, Making ends meet. San Diego, 2005,

http://www.onlinecpi.org/pdf/MEM_Publication.pdf (accessed March 2, 2006).

33. U.S. Census Bureau, PUMS 2000.

34. Ibid.

35. The 1999 poverty line numbers were used for these data. Ibid.

36. Center for Policy Initiatives, “Making Ends Meet,” San Diego, 2005, http://www.onlinecpi.org/pdf/

MEM_Publication.pdf (accessed March 2, 2006).

37. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Beneﬁts Survey, 2006.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. In fact, in the ACS survey, only 25 percent or less of respondents answered questions on government

assistance, as opposed to 42 percent of our sample. ASEC, which focuses speciﬁcally on these questions,

is complete and shows results close to our own.

42. California Employment Development Department, Labor market info, local area proﬁle, http://

www.cactis.ca.gov/ (accessed May 30, 2006).

43. U.S. Census Bureau, PUMS 2000.

44. Ibid.

45. U.S. Census Bureau, State & County QuickFacts,2006.

46. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2004.

47. U.S. Census Bureau, PUMS 2000.

48. Eric Frumin, Joan Moriarty, Pamela Vossenas, Joan Halpin, Peter Orris, Niklas Krause and Laura

Punnett, “Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders among Hotel Housekeepers: Employer Records

Reveal a Growing National Problem,” http://www.hotelworkersrising.org/pdf/hskpr_analysis0406.pdf

(accessed April 19, 2006), 2.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

290 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

51. Ibid., 4.

52. Ibid., 5–6.

53. Steven Greenhouse, “Hotel Rooms Get Plusher, Adding to Maids’ Injuries,” New York Times,April21,

2006.

54. Frumin et al., “Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders among Hotel Housekeepers: Employer Records

Reveal a Growing National Problem.”

55. Ibid.

56. Mike Freeman, “Developer May Team Up with Viejas to Build Hotels, Shops, Cruise Ship Terminal,” San

Diego Union-Tribune,April20,2006.

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