BREAKING NEWS: 06/28/2021 - UNITE HERE Local 11

Los Angeles City Council Passes UNITE HERE Local 11’s Groundbreaking Hotel Worker Protection Ordinance

Ordinance, Now Headed to Mayor Garcetti’s Desk, Will Make Los Angeles one of the nation’s first to require daily room cleaning, panic buttons, and fair compensation for heavy workloads

Los Angeles: In a 8-2 vote, the Los Angeles City Council passed a life changing law that would provide much needed protections for hotel workers across the city.

The final procedural vote comes after the council voted to adopt the ordinance last week.

The law provides:

Automatic daily room cleaning throughout the industry
Panic buttons and other security measures to protect hotel housekeepers from sexual assault and threatening conduct
Fair compensation for heavy workloads
Expansion of minimum wage law for hotel workers

“We are grateful to the Los Angeles City Council for this historic victory for hospitality workers. During the pandemic hotel housekeepers were lined up at food banks while the hotel industry received billions of dollars of corporate welfare and now are enjoying record breaking profits. This law, we hope, will start to focus the economic recovery from the greed of corporations to the needs of the workers who are the backbone of the tourism industry,” said Kurt Petersen, Co-President, UNITE HERE Local 11.

While much of the law mirrors protections hotel workers have secured in Long Beach, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, and Glendale, the Los Angeles law also breaks new ground in the region by requiring automatic daily room cleaning of hotel rooms.

“This Council has consistently recognized that, for the past two and a half years, our hotel workers have provided essential services during unprecedented and uncertain times. Their sacrifices and service saved lives, and now it’s time for us to ensure that they have access to the overtime pay and safe working conditions that they deserve,” said Council President Nury Martínez.

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UNITE HERE Local 11 is a labor union representing over 32,000 hospitality workers in Southern California and Arizona who work in hotels, restaurants, universities, convention centers, and airports.