Behind the Bedsheets
Hotel workers fight for fair conditions
BY Nicole Cohen
Photography by Lisa Kannakko
Karen Dublin is tired of being invisible. For the past 13 years she has worked as a room attendant at the Sheraton Centre hotel in Toronto making beds, cleaning washrooms, changing sheets, vacuuming and taking out garbage. She cleans 15 rooms per shift, for $14.92 an hour. On a normal day at a hotel, room attendants (the majority of whom are immigrant women) clean a back-breaking 16 rooms per shift, or 32 beds a day.
A study conducted by Dublin’s union, UNITE HERE, found that room attendants’ injuries are on the rise as hotel ownership consolidates under a few multinationals that compete to out-luxuriate each other with more deluxe beds. Room attendants’ workloads are increasing dramatically but their rate of pay is not changing, nor is the time they’re allotted to clean each room. They are working harder and faster, often skipping breaks and meals. The study, which surveyed over 600 room attendants, reports that 91 percent suffer from job-related pain and most of them take pain medication.
As guests become more comfortable, room attendants are experiencing more pain. Dublin’s shoulders ache from the new Sheraton Sweet Sleeper beds, which have heavier mattresses and are covered with more sheets and pillows than ever before. One co-worker suffers from a torn rotator cuff (an injury common to baseball players), others have sore knees and backs. “Everyone I know has pain,” she says. “It’s criminal for us to be working so hard.”
Dublin is on a three-month leave of absence from her job to work at UNITE HERE on the Hotel Workers Rising campaign, a North America-wide effort to raise the conditions of work and living for those employed in some of the most strenuous, underpaid jobs in the service sector. The campaign aims to reduce workloads and raise wages (the average annual wage for Toronto hotel workers is $29,800) so workers do not have to hold two or three jobs to make ends meet. “These companies are worth billions of dollars and we’re not making enough to survive,” Dublin says. Hotel multinationals are earning record profits: The industry made about $20.8 billion before taxes in 2005, which is expected to increase by 21 percent this year.
In May, while hotel chains were in contract negotiations to achieve better rates of pay, lower workloads and subsidized transit passes for workers, UNITE HERE held a large, boisterous meeting for hotel workers and community members to mobilize support for the campaign.
The meeting made critical links between issues facing hotel workers and community issues such as poverty, affordable housing and youth violence. About 1,000 people showed up to hear workers and Torontonians, including Mayor David Miller, speak about their dreams for a city in which workers have well-paying jobs, live in safe neighbourhoods and command respect.
To this end, a task force on the hotel industry comprised of academics and activists will explore labour-industry partnerships with the goal of raising hotel workers’ standard of living to the middle class.
Organizers hope this type of public event will draw attention to the major role hotel work plays in cities’ economies. Hotels employ thousands of workers and are the first point of contact tourists have with cities. Dublin and her co-workers know this, and take their jobs seriously. Now they want their work recognized.
“What we do for a living is very hard,” she says. “Nobody talks about hotel workers because the work is not valued.” The Hotel Workers Rising campaign has given Dublin a voice. “We’ve been invisible for too long. It’s time we come out from behind the bedsheets and become visible.”
