New Push for Hotel Worker Rehiring Rights, By Jondi Gumz

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COMMUNITY NEWS New Push for Hotel Worker Rehiring Rights

By Jondi Gumz

When COVID-19 struck Santa Cruz County last year, it hit the hospitality sector hard. Some 10,000 jobs at hotels and restaurants — a tenth of the county’s jobs — were lost by April.

With safety restrictions on travel, hotels and restaurants, only half of those jobs have returned.

On Friday, Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) introduced Assembly Bill 1074, supported by hotel workers and their union, UNITE HERE Local 11, to make sure that when their employers resume operations, hospitality workers can return to work.

The bill focuses on hotel workers in guest services, food and beverage, cleaning and building maintenance as well as subcontracts for those services. temporary staffing and successor employers in case of an ownership change.

“California’s hospitality workforce has been decimated by COVID-19, and these employees deserve basic protections which will allow them to return to the jobs and wages they earned before the pandemic as the industry reopens,” Sen. María Elena Durazo (D-Los Angles), principal co-author of AB 1074, said. “This bill effectively addresses the concerns Gov. Newsom raised to our prior effort.”

Last year, Durazo, Gonzalez and Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) authored AB 3216, a right to recall and retention bill that would have required employers to give a former employee the name of who was hired in their place and the reasons why. It passed but Newsom voted it, saying it required sharing too much personal information of hired employees.

“Latinos have made up the backbone of the hospitality industry for decades. Many stayed with the same employers for years in order to work their way up and earn a stable living,” Gonzalez said. “When hotels and event centers can safely reopen, the least we must do is ensure workers can return to the jobs they previously held.”

She joined dozens of workers who caravanned from Los Angeles and Orange County to La Jolla for a press conference outside the corporate headquarters of JC Resorts, which owns and operates hotels and golf courses, including Terranea Resort in Ranchos Palos Verdes.

That resort terminated much of its workforce amid the pandemic, without making a binding commitment to rehire longtime workers when the hotel reopened, according to Unite Here Local 11.

“Rehiring Rights” page 10