Hundreds of L.A. Hotel Housekeepers March To Raise Awareness Of Injuries At Their Workplace

Giant Quilt Symbolizes Hazards for Workers in
Luxury Hospitality Industry

For more news and information about the Century Corridor hotel workers fight to improve the working conditions of housekeepers in hotels across the city, visit the Coalition for a New Century website.

Over 400 hotel housekeepers, clergy and community leaders marched on Century Boulevard on October 25 to raise public awareness of the high risk of injuries for room attendants in L.A.’s booming hospitality industry. The events marked the launch of a new effort by a community and labor coalition to improve the working conditions of housekeepers in hotels across the city.

Over the past two months, housekeepers attended injury-prevention trainings to discuss workplace injuries and how to advocate for greater protections. Today’s pilgrimage, rally and march of union and non-union workers served to highlight the grueling conditions they endure at the luxury hotels in which they work.

"Today we bring to light the pain and suffering that housekeepers have endured at the luxury hotels of Los Angeles," said Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, who led a five-mile pilgrimage of clergy and students in the afternoon. “Housekeepers work very hard to make hotel guests feel safe and comfortable, yet despite huge profits, the hotels don’t want to give these workers a living wage, and the respect they need to sustain and keep their families safe and comfortable.”

Researchers studying the mechanics of housekeeping have found that housekeepers are more likely to be at high risk for lower back injury than workers in occupations such as auto assembly and patient handling.

The hotel industry in Los Angeles has reported double-digit profits for the third year in a row, according to a 2007 analysis done by PKF Consulting. Despite this, most hotel workers are paid low wages and lack adequate access to health care for themselves and their families. Housekeepers have little or no say about managing their workloads; many of them skip breaks and lunch to meet daily room quotas.

"The hotel industry has been benefiting from the hard work of housekeepers for many years. Most of these workers are women whose low earnings don't allow them to provide adequately for their families," said Katherine Spillar, Executive Vice President of the Feminist Majority Foundation, who spoke at the rally. "Not only are they being cheated from a living wage, but they're also at risk of injury every time they go to work. We can't turn a blind eye any longer."

“When hotel guests see their rooms nice and clean, they have no idea that the housekeeper who did the work was probably injured,” said Rosa Balam, who worked in the Westin LAX Hotel for 14 years as a housekeeper and fell and suffered a miscarriage in 2005 while lifting an 80-pound bag of linen. She has been unable to work since and is awaiting five surgeries on her knees, arms and shoulder. “Guests should know that we’re suffering and not bring their business to a hotel that exploits their workers.”

Balam and other housekeepers carried the “Quilt of Pain & Tears.” The workers crafted the 40-foot quilt over a 4-week period as a poignant symbol of the injuries that they suffer at work. Housekeepers wrote their names, years in the hotel industry and injuries on color-coded patches: brown for disabled housekeepers; orange for those who suffer from chronic pain on the job; yellow for those who take medication for their pain; and multi-color for those who have had surgeries. Black patches signify work-related fatalities.

A number of studies have documented high rates of injuries among hotel housekeepers. A 2006 report found that 91 percent of housekeepers surveyed reported workplace pain. Of those, more than three quarters said that the pain interfered with routine activities, and two thirds said they took pain medication regularly. The report also found that the injury risk for housekeepers is 61 percent greater than for other hotel employees. Meanwhile, a study released in August of this year found that among surveyed hotel workers, women and minorities are more likely to get injured than other workers.