I'm sympathetic. Hotel maids work very hard for low wages. The ladies (and a few gentlemen) who get up at 4am to serve breakfast (free to guests) are heroes in my book. I depend on them whenever I travel, and I make sure I leave them all a tip. They deserve it.
So if a union is being formed to demand higher wages, I'd tend to favor it. After all, I'm as much against poverty as Misters Gotta and Fried, and if it's at all practicable to raise the salaries of hotel maids, surely that's a no-brainer.
But raising salaries is not what this union local in Stamford has in mind. Instead their goal is simply to reduce productivity. To wit:
So if a union is being formed to demand higher wages, I'd tend to favor it. After all, I'm as much against poverty as Misters Gotta and Fried, and if it's at all practicable to raise the salaries of hotel maids, surely that's a no-brainer.
But raising salaries is not what this union local in Stamford has in mind. Instead their goal is simply to reduce productivity. To wit:
- Employees should be allowed to talk on their cell phones during work hours and get paid for it.
- Cooks, who are paid more because they bring essential skills, should spend valuable time doing work that servers can do more efficiently and cheaper.
- Managers should be forbidden from helping out--they can't clean a room or assist with service.
None of this actually helps the maids. Yes, she can now talk on her cell phone instead of working, but how this substantially improves her life is beyond me. And worse: why should I leave a tip to a maid who takes twice as long to clean my room because she's yakking on the phone?
Consider:
At the Sheraton, workers are now fighting for their first contract, but before voting to join Local 217 workers were often made to staff positions other than their own, regularly taking on two or more different jobs in the same shift. This allowed the bosses to hire fewer people and cut hours for positions like the café. By keeping a skeleton staff that is worked to the bone, they save a lot of money on labor costs, but at the same time the hotel cannot maintain a high level of customer service. Management proves again and again that they prioritize profits over guest satisfaction.
This is perverse. Surely an employee who can flexibly do several jobs as needed is more likely to be working full time than one who can only make beds (but not vacuum floors). It's hard to see why a guest should have to wait for the unionized vacuum operator to come along before the room is cleaned.
All it does is featherbed the workforce. The hotel will have to hire more maids to do the work of the phone talkers--and each of those additional employees will pay additional union dues. It's the union bigshots who come out ahead on this.
On the other hand, if instead of featherbedding all the maids just got a raise, the union's additional take would at most be a trivial percentage. This is a classic example where the interests of the union diverge from that of the employees.
Misters Gotta & Fried, being Marxists, claim that capital deserves no return--all proceeds should go to the employees. The net profit margin (as percent of operating costs) for Hilton Worldwide in June, 2019, is 8.71%. In another article, Mr. Gotta writes "Right now, hotels in Stamford, Conn., the second largest market in New England, are bringing in big profits for the owners. They can afford to pay their workers a living wage, but they’re too greedy to concede a few bucks."
So let's play that out. Suppose Hilton sacrificed their entire 8.71% margin. The employees all get a raise by that amount. Presumably suppliers receive a similar bump--they'd have to give their own employees an 8.71% raise. Of course not just workers, but managers also get a raise. Most front-line managers are not paid much more than the hourly workers.
So what happens then? Hilton's profit margin has just gone to zero.
This strategy will fail. Most large hotel chains often do not own the real estate. They simply lease it for a period of years, or occasionally operate the hotel on a commission basis. The benefit is that companies like Hilton can just walk away from the property at little cost. The employees know this, and sabotage will be rewarded with everybody losing their jobs.
A hotel--like any business, no matter who owns it--has to be profitable to stay in business. Sabotage certainly doesn't help. What's the point of having a union if you're not going to avail yourself of the grievance procedure?
It's worth noting that once the union is in place, it wants all employees to behave so that it can extract its dues from them as efficiently as possible. Union leaders are smart enough to know that money can't be squeezed out of a bankrupt hotel.
I think the union drive is just a big scam designed to transfer money from hotel maids to union bureaucrats. It's a scandal.
Further Reading:
All it does is featherbed the workforce. The hotel will have to hire more maids to do the work of the phone talkers--and each of those additional employees will pay additional union dues. It's the union bigshots who come out ahead on this.
On the other hand, if instead of featherbedding all the maids just got a raise, the union's additional take would at most be a trivial percentage. This is a classic example where the interests of the union diverge from that of the employees.
Misters Gotta & Fried, being Marxists, claim that capital deserves no return--all proceeds should go to the employees. The net profit margin (as percent of operating costs) for Hilton Worldwide in June, 2019, is 8.71%. In another article, Mr. Gotta writes "Right now, hotels in Stamford, Conn., the second largest market in New England, are bringing in big profits for the owners. They can afford to pay their workers a living wage, but they’re too greedy to concede a few bucks."
So let's play that out. Suppose Hilton sacrificed their entire 8.71% margin. The employees all get a raise by that amount. Presumably suppliers receive a similar bump--they'd have to give their own employees an 8.71% raise. Of course not just workers, but managers also get a raise. Most front-line managers are not paid much more than the hourly workers.
So what happens then? Hilton's profit margin has just gone to zero.
- The stock price also falls to zero. Anybody with a 401K or pension plan invested in Hilton is just plum outta luck.
- The board of directors all resign. Why bother managing a company that can't earn a dime? It's a lot of work to manage a company!
- Most of the C-suite execs also quit. Their pay is mostly in stock options--now worthless. The reservations system crashes.
- Suppliers no longer trust the company to pay their debts. After all, with a stock price of zero Hilton has no collateral anymore. So all transactions are cash only.
- Travel agents no longer book rooms at Hilton. There's no guarantee that the customer will actually get the room she paid for. Even today something occasionally goes wrong and the room fee needs to be refunded. Hilton can no longer be trusted to make those refunds.
- Homeless people move into the lobby.
- The city confiscates the hotel property for back taxes.
If you want to see what a profit-free hotel looks like, just check out housing in Cuba, or the NYC public housing projects. Nobody wants to live like that, much less pay $250/night for the privilege. All that for a once-off, 8.71% raise? Fortunately most hotel workers are smart enough to know that money doesn't grow on trees, something that Misters Gotta and Fried apparently haven't learned yet.
My Trotskyist comrades see themselves as uncompromising radicals, and they urge nothing less on their fellow workers.
A worker’s strength also does not exist in the formal relationship between the union and the boss. ...Strength comes from shop floor militancy. What workers have on their side is the ability to apply pressure on management through delegations, workplace actions, shop-floor campaigns like button ups, or a strike.In other words, employees should, as a first resort, sabotage the workplace.
This strategy will fail. Most large hotel chains often do not own the real estate. They simply lease it for a period of years, or occasionally operate the hotel on a commission basis. The benefit is that companies like Hilton can just walk away from the property at little cost. The employees know this, and sabotage will be rewarded with everybody losing their jobs.
A hotel--like any business, no matter who owns it--has to be profitable to stay in business. Sabotage certainly doesn't help. What's the point of having a union if you're not going to avail yourself of the grievance procedure?
It's worth noting that once the union is in place, it wants all employees to behave so that it can extract its dues from them as efficiently as possible. Union leaders are smart enough to know that money can't be squeezed out of a bankrupt hotel.
I think the union drive is just a big scam designed to transfer money from hotel maids to union bureaucrats. It's a scandal.
Further Reading:
- Jeff Mackler Interviewed by Paul Duddridge
- Heather Bradford on Abortion
- Louis "Lyndon LaRouche" Proyect
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