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Marriott International housekeepers present their personal security features. (Marriott International)
With new personal safety features and corporate policies, leading US hotel brands have joined a collective effort to protect workers from aggression and sexual harassment.
The promise will set a new standard for harassment safety and education for employees, the leading hotel companies and the American Hotel & Lodging Association said Thursday. Hoteliers, including Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott and Wyndham, joined the partnership. The companies also consulted Tina Chen to form the initiative. Chen is co-founder of The Legal Defense Fund of Time & # 39; s Up, which connects people with sexual misconduct to legal assistance.
"No industry is immune to the problems of sexual harassment," said Katherine Lugar, President and CEO of AHLA. "Fighting it takes vigilance."
The hotel industry has had to deal with workers' safety issues, especially for housekeepers and other people working in private hotel rooms who are often alone at work. In addition, the rise of the #MeToo movement put additional pressure on major hotel chains to impose stricter protections on tens of thousands of workers. In the past decade, more than 25% of sexual harassment charges have been filed in sectors heavily occupied by service workers, according to a November analysis by the Center for American Progress.
Calls for worker safety, particularly with regard to sexual harassment, have already been launched in front of hotel senior managers. In May, eight Marriott employees attended the company's annual meeting of shareholders to share their experiences of workplace harassment. Arne Sorenson, President and CEO of Marriott, responded to each comment by telling employees that they should not have to work to the point of being scared for their safety.
Unite Here, the largest union of hotel workers in North America, said the decision to provide emergency devices is a return of years of opposition to these measures. The union also urges hoteliers to consider two other security measures: policies to remove guests at mid-stay if they harass or abuse a hotel employee and to prevent offenders from entering the hotel. immediately change their reservation at the same hotel where a past incident occurred.
Through this partnership, companies will provide ongoing training and training in the identification and reporting of sexual harassment experiences. And they will provide employees in the United States with personal safety devices at work, including in private rooms.
Some hotels already provide security features in cities such as New York, Chicago, Seattle and Washington, in some cases to comply with local legislation. As part of the new commitment, participating hotel companies will expand the use of their devices based on the configuration and characteristics of their properties.
Personal security devices come in many forms and no device can work in all situations. Devices that rely on WiFi, for example, do not match every building in every local environment. Similarly, the training needs of workers in large urban hotels may differ from those of more rural settlements.
"One of the lessons learned over the past 30 years is that a lot of training on sexual harassment and policies was available," said Mr. Chen. "They probably all looked like all types of employers in all sectors, so that's why it does not work, you need to have solutions that fit the scenarios you're working on."
AHLA convened a task force in 2017 to begin describing the initiative and, in July of this year, organized a meeting of business leaders, legislators and experts. safe to discuss best practice security tools. On Thursday, hotel executives said the partnership was not "static" but rather an "evolution" that would require a constant reassessment of ways to keep employees and guests safe. Mr Lugar estimated that the full deployment of the initiative would cost hundreds of millions of dollars and affect tens of thousands of people.
The Alliance also relies on the advice of organizations specifically dealing with the fight against sexual assault and human trafficking, including Prostitution and Child Trafficking, and the National Alliance against Sexual Violence. .
Erika Alexander, head of accommodation services for the Americas Marriott, told the Washington Post that worker safety is not a new topic for the hospitality industry. What has changed rather, is the ability of the new technology to use for worker safety. Alexander praised the hotel chains for putting aside the competition to tackle a common intolerance to harmful and dangerous behaviors.
Alexander said that improving technology, accessibility and affordability of personal devices and other security tools will improve for hoteliers and their thousands of employees.
"This is not a new conversation," Alexander said. "We are intensifying our practices to make sure we take advantage of all the advances around us."
Yet hotel managers said the initiative was not limited to emergency protections as it aims to ensure workers are not in a dangerous situation.
"The camera comes into play when there is a problem," said Elie Maalouf, IHG's executive director for the Americas. "The main goal we have is to avoid this problem."
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