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Find me case studies on labor management in hotels
INTRODUCTION
Hello! Thank you for your question about case studies on labor management in hotels. The short version is that there have been several labor disputes, both settled and ongoing, that have affected the hospitality industry. These disputes can cost anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of dollars depending on the case. Below you will find a deep delve of my findings.
METHODOLOGY
In order to fully answer your question, I began by gathering a list of case studies about how hotels manage their labor force and overtime. From there I narrowed down the list to US-based, and several unionized, companies, and for each study I provide details about what costs were incurred and how.
CASE STUDIES
This case study reviews the situation with the local 878 Anchorage union and the Sheraton Hotel run by the Texas based Remington Lodging & Hospitality. This lengthy battle began in 2009 when the union went to renegotiate their contract. Since then, there have been several orders from judges to the Sheraton to improve their labor practices, and in 2014 an administrative law judge concluded the hotel violated numerous federal labor laws.
The major costs incurred by the hotel so far have been legal fees. They have been fighting a drawn-out legal battle that has continued despite two judges already ruling against them in court. So far, they have not had to pay any settlements, but given that the most recent ruling against the Sheraton Anchorage showed they had "disciplined numerous employees for exercising their rights, including unlawfully firing three employees in retaliation for their having supported of Local 878" the union is hopeful for a future settlement.
A suit filed against the Hilton Hotel in LAX in 2008 was closed in 2012 when the court ruled in the worker's favor. The Hilton Hotel had to pay $2.5 million to its workers because it "withheld wages, failed to pay overtime and failed to provide meal and rest breaks to workers from 2004 to 2011"
Banquet managers at the Marriott's California locations are suing the company claiming that they were falsely classified as exempt, and that there were cases of employees working 35 hours of overtime a week. Joseph Ibrahim is seeking $74,999 for individual damages, and his case is set to be heard by the California Superior Court. Marriott has payed to settle labor disputes before. In 1998, after an 18-month investigation by the federal government, Marriott was indicted for violating labor laws and payed $1.5 million to it's employees.
Workers have alleged high workloads, workplace injuries due to "backbreaking" work, and most recently, unpaid wages against several Hyatt locations all owned by the Hyatt Corporation. In Boston, Hyatt payed out $1 million to 98 fired housemaids to close a suit after they hired temporary workers at half the pay to fill in the positions of the housemaids. Other Hyatt locations have been boycotted costing the company in lost bookings and potentially lower stock-prices.
In 2013 the hotel was bought at auction by the Welcome Hotel Group. The union was in negotiation for a labor contract with the hotel for almost a year when talks broke down. The workers are alleging that the Welcome Hotel Group stopped giving paid days off and began requiring work above and beyond a normal load. This dispute is ongoing, but it is possible that the legal battle has cost the company too much as a local paper reports that they have been unable to make payments towards their utilities in full over the past year.
Union: No
This staffing company provides workers for local resorts and hotels. By classifying their workers as independent contractors instead of employees they avoided having to pay them for overtime. Many employees claimed to have worked more than 40 hours a week without any overtime pay. They company was charged with more than $150,000 in fines including a civil penalty because the violations were willful in nature.
Union: Not this location
In 2012 the DoubleTree hotel in Richardson, Texas was found guilty of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act involving minimum wage, overtime, and record-keeping. They agreed to pay back wages to more than 100 employees, coming to a total of $102,592. A press release about the incident stated: "In this case, we found employees working an average of 86 hours a week without any overtime pay and sometimes receiving far less than the federal minimum wage."
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, hotels have paid out millions of dollars to settle disputes involving unpaid labor, and some of these can continue in court for many years without resolution. On average though settlements range in the low hundreds of thousands for back-pay.
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