The Phoenix City Council will consider three sweeping ordinances aimed at protecting the health of hospitality workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A coalition of council members requested a vote on the new ordinances to happen on Wednesday, the council's last meeting before its summer recess.
"We believe we are putting our residents, travelers and workers at greater risk by not properly addressing the health and financial conditions of our new reality," Vice Mayor Betty Guardado, Councilman Carlos Garcia and Councilwoman Laura Pastor said in a letter.
The ordinances would, among other things, require tourism-related companies to add sanitation training, paid sick leave and mandatory breaks. They are backed by the local hospitality union, Unite Here, where Guardado worked as a union official for most of her career before she was elected.
But the hotels, airport concessionaires and other companies that will be responsible for the cost of the possibly pricey new requirements say they weren't told about the proposed ordinances until late last week.
"We read them on Saturday and were stunned," said Matthew Crow of Grossman Company, which has been in Phoenix 60 years and owns the Arizona Grand Resort & Spa.
Hotel managers and other industry leaders are asking the council to press pause and allow them to provide input before the city enacts any new policies.
Housekeepers, hotel banquet servers and airport employees say relief can't wait and that they need the city's support in order to perform their jobs safely and keep their families afloat.
What would new policies do?
In May, the council asked staff to look into ways to support hospitality workers during COVID-19 after Guardado brought forward the request.
The city planned to bring the ordinances to the council at a special meeting in mid-July.
But Guardado, Pastor and Garcia instead sent a letter to city management requesting the ordinances go to the council at the regular July 1 meeting.
The ordinances would:
- Cap the amount of area housekeepers can clean in a day to 4,000 square feet in an eight-hour workday.
- Require employees to pass a city-sanctioned, six-hour public hygiene program within 120 days of employment.
- Adds mandatory paid 15-minute breaks for all employees every four hours.
- Adds 80 hours of sick leave for those not covered by the Family First Coronavirus Response Act.
- Require companies to recall furloughed employees by seniority before hiring from the outside.
Places with a collective bargaining agreement are exempt from these requirements.
Why just hospitality?
Guardado said Phoenix's tourism industry is one of its most profitable and important, which is why she focused the ordinances on those businesses specifically, instead of requiring the enhanced health protocols across all industries.
"We want to make sure Phoenix is doing the right thing. We are keeping our hospitality industry healthy, we are keeping our workers healthy and we're keeping our travelers healthy as well," she said.
Guardado said she pushed up the timeline for the ordinances because of Arizona's surging COVID-19 cases and deaths.
"We've got to move this fast to protect the hospitality workers and protect passengers," she said.
Guardado said she spoke with the Unite Here union and hospitality workers to craft the ordinances. She said she also looked at similar ordinances passed in cities across the country, many pushed by the local Unite Here unions.
Prior to becoming a councilwoman in 2019, Guardado worked for Unite Here for 20 years, including as vice president of the union.
The most recently available online tax filings from 2016 show Guardado made nearly $120,000 in compensation from the local union and "related organizations" as the union's secretary and treasurer. In addition to airport concessions workers, the union represents hotel housekeepers and other working-class hospitality employees.
Guardado said she stopped working for the union in July 2019, about two months after she was elected. Her husband continued to work for the union until earlier this year when he was laid off amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
But managers and business owners in the industry say the ordinance ignores state and federal laws that already address these issues and ties the hands of an industry that is already struggling to recover.
They say the city didn't bother to seek their input prior to crafting the ordinances — or even give them a heads-up before dropping the policies onto an agenda.
Proposed ordinance takes the hospitality industry by surprise
Crow said he learned about the proposed ordinance on Saturday morning. His staff worked quickly to get a copy of the proposal to review.
The proposal sent Crow and others in the hospitality industry in Phoenix scrambling to react. A loose group of stakeholders has come together to form Save Phoenix Tourism to voice their frustration over the ordinance and the process.
Crow said the ordinance overlooks the fact that hotels in Phoenix are seasonal and thus occupancy — and staffing — shift daily.
"The kind of rigidity that's in this ordinance may work in Los Angeles, but it shows a complete lack of understanding of how the hotel business works in Phoenix," Crow said. "And they would know that if they would talk to industry."
The group is asking that the ordinance be removed from Wednesday's City Council agenda to give the industry more time to weigh in on the proposal.
“Because these ordinances don’t directly impact public health in the workplace in a demonstrable way, there should be no urgency to pass them with just three business days notice,” said Kim Sabow, President and CEO of the Arizona Lodging and Tourism Association, in a statement emailed to The Arizona Republic.
“The hotel industry should have an opportunity to review and comment on these proposed changes, as should the rest of the Phoenix community," Sabow said.
Crow said the proposed ordinance comes at the wrong time, when hotels are already losing money due to the pandemic.
"I wish they had consulted us before they did this in such a hurried manner. And they got it wrong," Crow said.
Michael Dunne, area vice president of operations for Hilton, said his company is dealing with different ordinances in cities all across the country, which prevents the company from setting consistent standards.
"Every governor, mayor, city council is just opening and closing cities so we just want some consistency, but we want people being safe," he said.
That's difficult when there are different rules and regulations in every jurisdiction, he said.
He said Hilton is already working with the Mayo Clinic to set cleaning standards and said the company's plan is already to recall workers from furlough.
"You want to make sure you get people back to work, that's the biggest thing for me. We're not going to go out and hire from outside. We'd like to bring back our own employees," Dunne said.
He said he was concerned, however, about the square footage limitations for housekeepers. That would add costs to the company.
Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry president and CEO Glenn Hamer pulled no punches in criticizing the ordinances, calling them an "organized labor power play that could be the nail in the coffin of an industry that has already suffered tremendously during the pandemic."
“No one from the hospitality industry was consulted about these proposals, and it shows," he said in a statement. "These proposed mandates will only make running a business that relies on tourism nearly impossible."
Workers say the support is needed
Unite Here Local 11 spokeswoman Rachel Sulkes said hospitality labor unions across the country have turned to cities because states have failed to protect hospitality workers who have either been let go or forced to work in conditions that could expose them to COVID-19.
The ordinances would put more protections in place to make sure workers who've been furloughed have economic security and workers who have returned to the workplace don't get sick, she said.
Jose Carrasco had worked as a banquet server at the Arizona Grand since 2008 when he was sent home on March 5.
"It was immediate. We had big groups on the books already but ... they had to cancel because of what was going on," he said.
Initially, his supervisors told him that employees may be recalled if things turned around. But after two weeks, the company sent a note encouraging employees to file for unemployment. The downturn was going to last a while.
On May 1, Carrasco said he received a formal termination letter.
Recently, he received a generic email from the company saying he could reapply for on-call positions, but there was no guaranteed minimum number of hours per week, so it didn't make sense to go back, he said.
Carrasco started working at a remodeling company his brother-in-law owns, but then his brother-in-law and sister tested positive for COVID-19. He's in a holding pattern now.
If the ordinances had been in place, he would have had the right to return without reapplying for his job, Sulkes said.
Carrasco said he's not sure he would return, even when the impacts of COVID-19 eventually subside.
"I just felt like it was not right how they treated their employees who had shown their loyalty," he said.
Luz Balanzar, a housekeeper at Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort, was also sent home in March when stay-at-home orders went into effect. But she came back to work on May 15.
Balanzar said she was concerned when she returned because although she had a mask, she still had a lot of communication with guests who did not. She said her concerns were not addressed.
"The employer only cared about us getting the work done and not protecting us. That was it," Balanzar said through a translator.
About two weeks ago, Balanzar started to feel sick during one of her shifts. When she reported this to her supervisor, she was told to leave.
"They didn't care about how I was feeling, they cared about what were my other co-workers going to say," she said.
A few hours after she got home, a supervisor called and asked her to come back to work the next day. She refused and has been homesick ever since. She's awaiting her COVID-19 test results but feels confident she has contracted the virus.
Her husband and daughter have also fallen ill.
Balanzar said she's since learned that a co-worker had tested positive for COVID-19 but said management never notified her. She said some of her co-workers have told her that management hasn't notified them about Balanzar.
Balanzar said that if they had known about potential COVID-19 exposure, they would have taken more precautions.
Sulkes said Balanzar's story highlights the need for increased sanitation and health training.
Dunne said their company's protocol is to alert all employees who are known to have had contact with someone who has tested positive.
He said he would look into the situation at Pointe Squaw Peak Resort.
You can connect with Arizona Republic Consumer Travel Reporter Melissa Yeager through email at melissa.yeager@azcentral.com. You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
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