Resorts Increasingly Turning to Foreigners for Service Jobs
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You don’t see people lining up to become hotel housekeepers.
Maybe that’s not shocking, but it’s a growing problem for Tucson’s resort hotels, industry executives say, and it’s at the heart of the national debate about a guest-worker program.
Hospitality is a major industry here. Combined, the largest seven resorts need around 4,500 workers to keep tourists comfortable.
Increasingly, the resorts rely on foreign labor for the daily work of cleaning rooms, washing sheets and dishes, and preparing food.
At Loews Ventana Canyon Resort and Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa, foreigners with seasonal work permits, called H-2B visas, make up 7 percent of the staff.
{snip}
“Those positions are constantly open. I never turn down a qualified person for a housekeeping position who is legal,” said Brian Johnson, managing director of Loews.
Industry groups are lobbying for more visas, but in an election year when the temporary visa issue has been tossed in with the hot topic of illegal immigration and the economy may be entering recession, the climate isn’t favorable for change.
Some argue the resorts should allow the free market to correct the problem.
{snip}
Before the resort started hiring guest workers, there was constant turnover, Johnson said.
Advertising, job fairs and extra recruiting in schools and churches brought in few applications. To get by, the company paid overtime and used a temporary-labor contractor to fill staffing holes.
The company doesn’t hire illegal entrants, Johnson said. Loews began checking the legal work status of all new hires five years ago using E-Verify, a federal program made mandatory under the new Legal Arizona Workers Act.
It’s the same story at the Westin. For the first time, the company is employing 30 seasonal visa workers from the Philippines, making up 7 percent of the resort’s 425 employees. General manager Bill Petrella said he’d like to hire 50 H-2B workers next year to fill more seasonally vacant jobs.
Seeking willing workers
Petrella would rather hire American workers, he said.
{snip}
Still, starting pay is low compared with other jobs. A housekeeping position at the Hilton Tucson El Conquistador Golf & Tennis Resort is listed in the Pima County One Stop job bank at $7 an hour, 10 cents above the state minimum wage.
The average wage for housekeepers in Tucson is $8.30 an hour, according to the Arizona Department of Commerce Research Administration. The average wage for housekeepers has grown faster than inflation most years, increasing an average 3.4 percent a year for the past six years.
The H-2B workers cost employers more. The company must pay a recruiter, pay application fees, secure housing for the workers and shuttle them to and from work.
{snip}
Resorts can increase wages and still not see applicants, said Debbie Johnson, president of the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association, which is lobbying for more H-2B visas.
If the resorts can’t hire visa workers, they’ll likely be forced to increase wages. Rising labor costs would be passed on to customers, she said. That could mean lost business.
{snip}
‘Cheap, obedient labor’
Not everyone agrees government should intervene on the resorts’ behalf.
The perceived labor shortage is the market’s signal that the resorts should start scrambling to find new sources of labor and ways to use their existing staff more efficiently, said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based group that supports tighter immigration controls.
{snip}
Saying that housekeeping and dishwashing are jobs Americans won’t do is gibberish, he said.
People who might want the jobs include racial-minority workers, college students, single moms who need flexible work schedules, older workers who want part-time jobs, refugees, high school dropouts, ex-prisoners and homeless people.
Marshall Vest, an economist with the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management, said there is a real long-term issue of where to find workers in a country with a low birthrate and an aging population.
{snip}
(Posted on January 22, 2008)
Comments
The price of a hotel room at the Hilton is about twice the national average. So why don’t they pay their housekeepers double the average rate?
Posted by at 6:37 PM on January 22
$7 per hour?
More immigrants is not the answer.
“Not everyone agrees government should intervene on resorts’ behalf”. Heh. ‘intervene’, aka corporate welfare.
I suspect those who do agree on a government bailout are the owners of the resorts. Especially in Arizona, where reliance on illegal labor was the source of their profits. In the bigger picture what they really want is for the taxpayer to be stuck subsidizing the profits of the resort industry. And stuck paying for all the anchor babies, chain migration, health care, education and all the other costs of importing crime, poverty and overpopulation.
How about a little faith in the free market? Pay a fair wage, raise prices if you need to. Close your doors if you are unwilling or unable to compete in a free market economy. Given that choice, I suspect most will raise wages rather than go out of business. But it sure won’t stop them from whining all the way to Congress. Maybe the real story is that there are too many businesses rather than too few employees.
In theory, we could build a mega-resort or chain store on every corner. Then argue that we have to import millions and millions of new consumers in order to buy all their stuff. And then import millions and millions more to be their employees. Then expand government to take care of their myriad needs. Very. Bad. Logic.
Close the door to all immigration. No visas. No illegals. The economy will find its own level. Business will grow, adapt, or disappear. Thats how it should be. Without the need for importing anyone.
Posted by Edward at 6:42 PM on January 22
I’m currently doing some seasonal work at a ski resort in the upper Midwest. We have 13 Brazilians working there as well on short-term work visas. At least two of our “guest workers” are studying to become engineers back home. They’re warm, friendly and interesting to talk to, but I wonder why they’re up here working at a place like this when they could easily be doing something else more lucrative. Meanwhile, there are 13 Americans who could use their jobs, at least until the snow melts and necessity dictates a move elsewhere.
It looks like our government wants to take ALL the jobs away — high wage, low wage and everything in between.
Posted by White World at 7:08 PM on January 22
This is puzzling.
With a U.S. population of well over 300,000,000 inhabitants, some business owners still insist they need more H-2B visa holders (foreign workers) to fill these low paying service jobs.
Something with this picture is askew here!
Posted by at 8:56 PM on January 22
They aren’t being honest about the problem. The truth is that blacks make lousy employees. They don’t work, are slovenly, steal anything and everything and are often dangerous. Add in the fact that, if you fire one, they sue you for racial discrimination and will win.
So, of course they want to replace black employees with immigrants. However, this is ILLEGAL. You are not allowed to fill a position with an H1B unless it was impossible to fill it with an american. You also can’t offer it at a reduced wage to the immigrant. That’s ILLEGAL. That’s not even counting how illegal it is to not hire black people who apply for the job, simply because they are black.
What is needed here is not more immigrants. What’s needed here is a far greater right to fire people for cause and to avoid lawsuits that have no merit.
Posted by at 10:07 PM on January 22
Think about this…if you go to any resort that is staffed with these people…think about the germs, the bugs…the diseases ect ect…that they bring to your hotel/resort…sleep tight…don’t let the bed bugs bite….
Posted by lydia at 10:31 PM on January 22
Capitalist greed is responsible for most of the racial problems we have today.
Posted by Joe at 11:12 PM on January 22
This is the ugly (not so)little secret about immigration in America. While many Americans are obsessed with “illegals,” wailing only about the legality of the situation(as if that is really the issue)most pay NO attention to the legal, sanctioned scheming going on right under their nose! Of course the illegal invasion is a major issue - but it is hardly the ONLY issue with regard to immigration and America. This country is becoming more ‘alienized’ on the hour! Before long, you won’t be able to go anywhere from Maine to New Mexico, from North Dakota to Alabama without finding a healthy concentration of non-white foreigners in your midst!
Posted by HH at 12:06 AM on January 23
A fair wage will bring American workers to work, and an unfair wage won’t. If wages are raised for housekeeping - then wages will go up for everyone above the rank of Housekeeper.
Posted by pat at 12:35 AM on January 23
Although not perfect the seasonal visa at least brings in a better grade of immigrant, and one more likely to go home, than does the hiring of the low grade illegal Mexican mestizo. Brazilians who come here are usually far more European than the Mexicans who do, and resent Mexicans and the Spanish language, and generally go home when their time is up.
Let’s pick our battles here a little carefully. What we really don’t want is Africans and the lowest, high-Indio grade of mestizo. Brazilians who are not lily white may not be what we really want but they are not what we really do not either. As long as they go home and don’t drop any anchor babies I don’t care.
Posted by Bret Ludwig at 1:09 AM on January 23
“You are not allowed to fill a position with an H1B unless it was impossible to fill it with an american”
That is absolutely false. There is no such requirement whatsoever in the H-1B program in fact it is entirely legal to fire americans and replace them with underpaid H-1B workers without ever looking to hire american and it is all perfectly legal.
Posted by at 3:54 AM on January 23
So call it a rhetorical question… but have these resorts ever thought of offering a FAIR WAGE to attract Americans? At the risk of sounding like a skeptic, I seriously doubt the resort guests get any break from the lower wages the resorts pay — knowing only H1B immigrants and illegals will work for that kind of pay.
This seems to be the crux of the problem. Corporate and business entities DON’T WANT TO PAY A FAIR WAGE! They would rather hold wages down so low a real American can’t afford to work at those jobs. Justifying their cry to Congress that they can’t get Americans to take the jobs offered. A textbook example of a ‘half truth.’ Yet the CEOs and presidents of these businesses and corporations earn salaries that are absolutely ridiculous compared to their true worth.
Posted by Fed Up at 7:53 AM on January 23
Let me see if I understand this:
We are bringing in groups of permanent residents to rectify a temporary problem.
Didn’t we do this one before?
We brought in thousands of blacks (yes involuntarily) to do manual labor in the South.
The jobs dried up, the blacks stayed and now number over 40 million people in the U.S.
Posted by Dennis at 1:25 PM on January 23
>>>They aren’t being honest about the problem. The truth is that blacks make lousy employees. They don’t work, are slovenly, steal anything and everything and are often dangerous. Add in the fact that, if you fire one, they sue you for racial discrimination and will win.
Some VERY ACCURATE observations. The solution? Offer the jobs — at a very low wage. THEN you can claim you are unable to get people to do the job. Hey, it happens all the time.
That Blacks make lousy workers is something MANY employers found out in the post-1965 period. When the pressure, particularly for high-visibility companies, was on — TO HIRE BLACKS! Most employers considered themselves “lucky” if they got ANY useful work out of their Black employees. Yes, I lived through those times. What you didn’t see for yourself, you certainly heard about from others. Regards the lack of Black ethics, much less a work ethic.
That the average immigrant is A BETTER WORKER than a Black is the icing on the cake. Given the immigrant will generally take a job regardless of how low the pay. Best of all, the shyster EEO lawers that made their fortunes sueing companies on behalf of incompetent, lazy Black workers during those difficult times are getting less business from claimed race-related firings (incompetency, lack of work ethics, etc.). But today, most of these shyster lawers are the ones looking for ways to misconstrue innocent comments and/or acts into BLATANT RACISM. These, of course, being the kind of lawyers referred to in Will Shakespeare’s famous line: “First we hang all the lawyers… “
Posted by Fed Up at 1:40 PM on January 23
At Loews Ventana Canyon Resort and Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa, foreigners with seasonal work permits, called H-2B visas, make up 7 percent of the staff.
The company doesn’t hire illegal entrants, Johnson said. Loews began checking the legal work status of all new hires five years ago…
7% are temporary foreign workers. 98% don’t speak English. Of course we all know the other 91% consists of perfectly legal immigrant workers, right? Right?
If the resorts can’t hire visa workers, they’ll likely be forced to increase wages. Rising labor costs would be passed on to customers, she said. That could mean lost business.
Honestly now - what percentage of the cost of a room at a place like Ventana Canyon Resort consists of housekeeping costs? Even if a housekeeper spends an entire hour on your room, it’s only $7 a day - for a room that goes for several hundred dollars a day.
What they’re really worried about are the effects on profits. Business profits in 2005 for Fortune 500 companies were an astounding $888 billion, well above their prior peak, in 2001, of $495 billion - and they’ve only been climbing since.
This is about greed, and that’s all there is to it.
Posted by Alan at 2:17 PM on January 23
“Brazilians who are not lily white may not be what we really want but they are not what we really do not either. As long as they go home and don’t drop any anchor babies I don’t care. “
Posted by Bret Ludwig
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I understand Bret Ludwig’s argument, but it is really an argument for guest workers. The inherent flaw in having guest workers (as history has already shown us) is that guest workers tend to marry, settle down and become established. And who’s to prevent them from marrying or “dropping an anchorbaby”?
That becomes a problem. It’s a problem you don’t have the problem if they’re not here.
Posted by browser at 6:37 PM on January 23
“Capitalist greed is responsible for most of the racial problems we have today.”
Posted by Joe
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Like so much else, this is another issue involving America’s elite and what they are doing to the country in order to maintain their own comforts and high style of living. No matter how you look at it, this is a matter that benefits the “elite” few at the expense of the many. Very few ordinary Americans go to places like this.
The resort owners want to make more money and to pay cheaper wages to their low-paid employees. The well-to-do resort users who can afford to go to these expensive places are likewise from the same class or social group and they expect to be catered to and waited upon by smiling, docile servants.
Both resort owners and users expect overall society to pay the larger, hidden bill of providing for their alien worker’s medical care, education, and many other necessary social services. Neither the owners nor the users want to pay the full bill for these things themselves. They’ll get YOU to pay for it, if they can.
I say let them raise their wages, and raise their prices until the free market finds its own level. Paris Hilton can cut back on her lavish lifestyle a bit. She won’t starve. When the wages become attractive enough, willing workers will appear.
Posted by browser at 6:40 PM on January 23
The problem here is the government, as per usual. For all you blue collar Luddites, that blame Corporate America; if the Government protected the borders, ended immigration, and stopped subsidizing people for not working (welfare), business would have to pay a market wage to get real Americans to work.
Posted by Flamethrower at 6:45 PM on January 23
Also from McConkie: Cain was an associate of Lucifer and is the Father of the Negros.
“Though he was a rebel and AN ASSOCIATE OF LUCIFER IN PRE-EXISTENCE, and though he was a liar from the beginning whose name was Perdition, CAIN MANAGED TO ATTAIN THE PRIVILEGE OF MORTAL BIRTH. Under Adam’s tutelage, he began in this life to serve God….he came out in open rebellion, fought God, worshiped Lucifer, and slew Abel…. “As a result of his rebellion, CAIN WAS CURSED WITH A DARK SKIN; he became the father of the Negroes, and those spirits who ARE NOT WORTHY to receive the priesthood are born through his lineage. He became the first mortal to be cursed as a son of perdition. As a result of his mortal birth he is assured of a tangible body of flesh and bones in eternity, a fact which will enable him to RULE over SATAN.”(Mormon Doctrine, p. 102)
Posted by stevepearsonnl at 10:42 PM on January 23
Honestly now - what percentage of the cost of a room at a place like Ventana Canyon Resort consists of housekeeping costs? Even if a housekeeper spends an entire hour on your room, it’s only $7 a day - for a room that goes for several hundred dollars a day.
What they’re really worried about are the effects on profits. This is about greed, and that’s all there is to it.
Posted by Alan
…………………………………………………….
Alan makes an excellent point. A room that actually takes perhaps 20 or 30 minutes to clean can not be that expensive in terms of housekeeping costs. A maid is expected to clean an entire floor! Furthermore, there are ways that housekeeping could be cut back and made more efficient. Much of it is unnecessary. Is it really required to vacuum that floor EVERY day? How about every two or three days? Do you vacuum your own rugs at home every day? Does she have to come in and throw out the soap, that I’ve used only once, and replace it with a fresh bar? That’s waste, to me. I don’t do that at home.
A number of hotel chains have instituted a policy whereby they now change your linens and towels only every other day. After all, do you really need to have fresh towels EVERY day? Can’t you use the same towel twice? I can. I do at home.
Incidentally, those hotels that have instituted policies of changing the linens every other day claim that this is done to benefit the ecology — by limiting the pollution to air and water from detergents and chemicals. That’s nice of them to be so virtuous. I note that they do NOT mention that this is any benefit to them, financially, in terms of saving on labor or supplies. Nor have they reduced their prices in any way to reflect this saving!
Yes, as Alan says, it’s all about profits and greed.
PS. I checked the above resort’s prices. There was NOTHING available at all for the first two weeks of March, for any price. So I checked the very end of the month. A single room would cost you from $339. to $599. per night, before taxes (another 18.6%) and extras. The people who stay here are NOT poor; and don’t tell me that out of that sum, they or the hotel can’t afford to pay a maid (or other help) a decent American-scale wage. What they’re doing is importing near-slave labor to maintain SOME people in grand style.
http://www.fivestaralliance.com/luxury_hotel/tucson,_az/loews_ventana_canyon_resort/rates
Posted by ghw at 1:52 PM on January 24
Agree with FedUp! The unions/owners who control wages have every reason to continue to undermine USA workers and wages. Connect the dots. The DNC is funded by unions and they are the party for continuous immigrations (legal & illegal). The RNC gets little union backing but plays with DNC to get wages for greedy corps. The real shame in all of this is the total disregard for USA citizens who need living wage jobs. They can not pay workers but the CEO’s are paid millions. It is shameful and any decent person who makes millions off the backs of the low wages they offer has no moral humanity. If I made 10 million is one year I would have 9 millions distributed to all workers equally. Those who take/accept greedy packages and bonuses are criminals as far as I am concerned. V
Posted by Vickie at 1:25 AM on January 25
Cleaning houses is a joy compared to the sweatshop conditions of cleaning hotel rooms.
It is the law of capitalism and choice in employment. Cleaning is cleaning. The same skills are involved. But cleaning private homes is fairly pleasant work. And there is plenty of it if you don’t like your employer or her family. Just find another family in need of a maid.
Who wants to go to a sweatshop hotel when they could have a nice job cleaning houses?
Another tip for hotels. Mostly hotels, including the biggest chains in the world deduct the SS, unemployment, Workmen’s comp and other taxes. But they don’t send the money deducted to the proper government agencies. They keep the money for themselves.
Then a hotel worker retires and finds there is little or no money in the SS account. Or applies for unemployment and is told “there is no record of your having worked at that hotel for the last 7 years as you claim.”
Clean up your act hotels. Offer cleaners the same wage or a bit better than what the owners of private homes offer. Treat you help decently. Don’t give them a room completed quota that is impossible to meet. Send their tax deductions on to the proper agency.
But hotels don’t want to do that. They want illegals. They don’t want Americans.
Posted by at 1:20 PM on January 25
“But hotels don’t want to do that. They want illegals. They don’t want Americans.”
Posted by at 1:20 PM
—————————
Under the circumstances, it’s easy to understand why.
Illegals don’t know their rights; they don’t make demands; and they don’t complain.
On the other hand (not to defend them) illegals get all the attention and all the blame, while the big businesses that lure them here slip off the hook scot free.
Posted by at 9:11 PM on January 25
“Resorts Increasingly Turning to Foreigners for Service Jobs”
…………………….
The situation is Europe is exactly the same. It seems that every hotel maid in France nowadays is African. Whatever happened to the traditional “French maid”? No such thing. Now, they’re all black. And in Switzerland, I hear them chatering in the hallways in Spanish (but their accents and faces are not from Spain). In Germany, they are from everywhere.
Europe’s beds are being made by foreigners. Their floors are being swept and their dishes being washed by imported labor. Look in any restaurant — all the kitchen help is black! Their countries are being sold out from under them - just to obtain a few momentary comforts. The children of those maids and cooks will not be maids and cooks; they will be government ministers. And the children of those lazy Europeans will be taking orders from them.
Posted by ghw at 9:36 PM on January 25
“The children of those maids and cooks will not be maids and cooks; they will be government ministers. And the children of those lazy Europeans will be taking orders from them.”
That’s right. They will be running the Racial Equality Commission, like Sir Trevor Phillips in London. And whites will be grovelling to them in fear.
Posted by at 8:48 AM on January 26
“That Blacks make lousy workers is something MANY employers found out in the post-1965 period. “
So very true. It is an historical fact that the first great moving of manufacturing to other countries and the push to bring teh population of Mexico to the USA occurred in the late 1960’s as soon as employers realized:
(1( Blacks are terrible workers and cause many problems.
(2) Blacks are a never ending cause of expensive lawsuits.
If corporate America had only matched the ACLU ADL SPLC NOW funding, affirmative action would have been blown away in the courts. But corporate America instead choose to flee from an affirmative action black workforce overseas leaving the rest of us to persecution and ethnic cleansing by our government and the liberals.
Posted by margaret at 5:16 PM on January 26
It is an historical fact that the first great moving of manufacturing to other countries and the push to bring teh population of Mexico to the USA occurred in the late 1960’s as soon as employers realized:
(1( Blacks are terrible workers and cause many problems.
(2) Blacks are a never ending cause of expensive lawsuits.
margaret
——————————————-
That was also the time (as I personally remember) when companies were REQUIRED to start hiring blacks “en masse”. (We always had black employees before that, but they were hired on the basis of merit.)
Posted by at 10:25 PM on January 26
Amren readers should take advantage of house swaps, eliminating the need for hotels. Corporate America is a scam, these hotels pay almost no taxes to government.
Posted by Lars at 10:39 PM on January 27
>>>That Blacks make lousy workers is something MANY employers found out in the post-1965 period
Slave-owners found that out also… which is WHY slavery was dying a slow but steady death BEFORE the Civil War. But that’s yet another “inconvenient truth” neither Afro-Americans or the liberal fools would care to admit. Even had the Civil War NOT brought an end to the institution of slavery, by 1900 you probably would not have found any state still allowing slavery to flourish within its borders.
Another “truth” was Lincoln was really not interested in abolishing slavery at the beginning of the Civil War. His overwhelming concern was to force the secessionist states back into the Union. Lincoln also was aware of the utter futility of allowing a large Black population to remain in the U.S. His plan being to ship them back to Africa (Liberia). Unfortunately his assassination prevented his plan from being carried out.
That Africans (or Afro-Americans are generally lousy workers) was not just discovered in the post-1965 Civil Rights Legislation era but is amply supported by the mess in “modern” Africa today. As well as being more than amply corroborated by the fact Africans NEVER amounted to much before the incursion by White European powers who proceded to carve up Sub-Saharan Africa into European owned colonies. All very inconvenient to Blacks and liberals, but unfortunately ALL TOO TRUE for them to admit.
Posted by Fed Up at 1:17 PM on January 30
“Even had the Civil War NOT brought an end to the institution of slavery, by 1900 you probably would not have found any state still allowing slavery to flourish within its borders.”
FedUp
I’ll not only agree with you, I’ll go even further and say that I doubt that any states, but for perhaps just a few die-hard stragglers, would even have made it as far as 1900 with slavery intact. It just was not a paying proposition in the modern business world, if for no other reason. Most of the other states would have dropped it well before then — either by law or in practice.
Posted by browser at 5:25 AM on February 1