The call came to Sandy Villatoro’s cell phone when he was returning from his cousin’s funeral in Houston in March. The COVID-19 pandemic sparked canmobileations at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel, where she had given up her few shifts as a housekeeper to attend the funeral. .
Your manager’s call came in. March 28th would be your day at work.
“I didn’t even know what to think. I was surprised,” Villatoro said. “I worked there for five years and, you know, we were never fired. “
Mozes Bautista, a student at Arizona State University, worked for five years at the front table of the Embassy Suites hotel in downtown Phoenix. He says homework is best for his schedule and discounts on the wreckage allowed him to travel. His bosses were very docile when he had to take his mother, who had cancer, to medical appointments.
Until March, when he also won a phone call.
“They left about 80% of the license in a very short time or nothing,” Bautista said.
Kim Sabow, president and CHIEF executive of the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association, an industry group, told The Arizona Republic, a component of USA TODAY, that in March, when Arizona would see occupancy rates of about 80%, rates dropped. digit almost overnight.
“In fact, it had an effect on our industry and our revenue. In the first six months of this year, we lost $7 billion in guest expenses,” he said.
Thousands of employees of hotels and hotels in Arizona lost their jobs to the pandemic. Recent top figures from the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunities show that the recreational accommodation industry lost 16,100 jobs year after year, representing a net loss of more than 36% of the industry’s jobs in 2019.
According to Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity’s monthly employment figures, the accommodation industry hired 45,800 Arizonans by March 2020, and by May, that number had fallen to 24,600.
While the number of COVID-19 cases in Arizona has declined, some holiday-hungry people have gained confidence to book and, as a result, hotels and resorts have removed staff.
In July, the number of Arizonans hired in hotels and accommodation increased to 28,200 and remained solid at 28,300 in August.
As work slowly returns, Rachel Sulkes, organizer of Unite Here, the union that represents hotel and hotel staff in Arizona, is involved in what the staff will face. He said he heard from other people who came back here to discover that they had lost their seniority or accumulated free time.
“We think it’s vital because we know the virus spreads when other people feel compelled to move on to sick pictures,” Sulkes said.
The union is pushing for 3 separate Phoenix ordinances for city workers.
The orders were presented at a Phoenix City Council meeting in July through a letter from Mayor Lieutenant Betty Guardado, Councillor Carlos Garcia and Councilwoman Laura Pastor, and were temporarily withdrawn after the hotel industry complained that the provisions would have been complied with without their contribution.
Commercial teams and hotel owners felt the layouts were exaggerated and uncompromising at a time when the industry needed flexibility and hotels and resorts were doubling.
Fortunately, we managed to convince the City Council to provide it to us, while offering them data on industry leadership in those areas. We are at the forefront of cleaning. We make sure that visitors and painters enter the environments and environments of the paintings they are visiting,” Sabow said.
Sulkes said he’s ahead of the dialogue.
“I need to take the word from the industry and I need the city council to do it in its word that it’s actually about trying to get it right and not just resisting the legal responsibility to implement protections for staff and the public,” Sulkes said.
Bautista is one of the staff members who returned to his employee position, but his hours were limited to 32 hours, depending on the week. Continue painting as you discovered through package delivery for Amazon.
Overall, he said he felt about the protocols in place at Embassy Suites and was unaware of any reported cases there.
“I feel like the hotel is doing a decent job in terms of sanitation control and things like that,” he said.
His only frustration was the refusal of visitors not to wear a mask.
“It’s another life we live in now and it’s been imposed on everyone,” he said. “I don’t need to. You don’t have to. I don’t need to tell him to wear a mask yet. “it’s like that. “
Sandy Villatoro, beneficiary of a deferred action for the arrival of children and married to a US citizen, is in the process of filing a marital petition to discharge legal prestige in the United States. She knew if claiming unemployment benefits would jeopardize this claim, so she was hesitant to seek them.
“I had no job, so there was no money. I couldn’t afford much,” he said.
He implemented for unemployment and qualified for unemployment, but now the federal government’s additional $300 is exhausted.
The Sheraton Phoenix Downtown where he works is scheduled to reopen on November 1. As a component of the Marriott brand, the hotel instituted temperature controls, required workers to wear masks, and implemented other changes.
“To restrict the contacts of many guests, household chores have been replaced so that each and every room is not necessarily cleaned every day,” said Jon Erickson, the hotel’s sales and marketing manager.
Villatoro said she was nervous about coming back, and wondered how managers would deal with breaks and health leave, even if she is missing and in a position to return to work.
“We love our paintings and do it, but we must also be protected,” he said.
You can attach with Melissa Yeager, Consumer Journalist of the Republic of Arizona, via email to melissa. yeager@azcentral. com. You can also do this on Twitter and Instagram.