And unlike in other fields, the Philadelphia bill provides some context for how many people switched jobs during the pandemic, and how many returned.
“The passage of the bill preempted a lot of nasty fights that we otherwise likely would have had. By and large, the industry has followed the law as far as we know,” said Dermot Delude-Dix, a research analyst for UNITE HERE Local 274. As a cautionary tale, he pointed to a hotel in Maryland that received a Paycheck Protection Program loan but as of last year had not rehired any of its original staff.
The bills, called the “Black Workers Matter Economic Recovery Package,” explicitly aimed to protect the majority Black, Asian, and Latino hospitality workforce from being replaced by younger, lower-paid workers. In Philadelphia, that covered 12,000 people, according to numbers provided by the City Council.
In the end, many workers have returned to their former employers, according to data compiled by UNITE HERE.
“It varies by workplace but seems to correlate with the quality of the job,” said Delude-Dix. Center City hotels with higher wages saw a greater number of workers return to their old jobs, he said, with some rehiring as much as 90% of their formerly employed workforce in some capacity. Return rates were lower at the airport, said Delude-Dix, but those jobs also saw greater turnover pre-pandemic.
For the hotel industry, the desire to fill jobs as more guests return has pushed up wages, but hiring still lagged behind demand, according to the analytics group STR.
“I thought that bill was unnecessary because it’s in the best interest of the hotels to bring back their more experienced people first,” said Ed Grose, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hotel Association.
Grose said the hiring picture has slowly improved, but is still a challenge for some. Demand is not just for frontline workers, but also managers and chief engineers who oversee building maintenance.
“I am aware of some hotels that are resorting to cleaning contractors because they’re unable to hire housekeepers,” said Grose. UNITE HERE has repeatedly criticized such changessaying the reduction or outsourcing of cleaning undermines union jobs.
