Keisha Banks
For two decades, Keisha Banks had occasionally painted in the hotel industry, until last year, when she said goodbye to her paintings as an event waitress at Chateau Marmont via a massive email sent in March 2020 to the iconic employees. .
Banks, 41, felt things were going well in the industry as soon as hotel visitors began to “fall like flies” in early March, cancelling their bookings for occasions and rooms. She told BuzzFeed News that she was upset because the idea was “vague and impersonal. “
“When you paint at Chateau, one of the things they say is, “We’re all like a circle of relatives here, ” said Banks. “And then, to be direct, the email “You’re cut off” was wrong. “
It is the first in a series of unfortunate occasions that changed her life and that of many others like her.
As tourism collapsed and businesses closed in the early weeks of the pandemic, millions of others became unemployed, facing global uncertainty. No industry has dodged the effects of the pandemic, yet almost none has been as affected as recreation and hospitality. , which saw its maximum unemployment rate in April 2020 at 39%.
Now, as the United States emerges from the pandemic, with 50% of adults fully vaccinated by the end of May, staff are returning to the COVID-19 decimated industries. Many companies are reopening and the number of trips is recovering, and there were significant gains in hotel jobs in April 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But employment in the industry has still dropped 2. 8 million, or 16. 8 percent since February last year. Some companies, namely those in the hotel industry, would have struggled to find staff when they opened up. As a result, some commercial homeowners have concluded that unemployment benefits are too strong, that their businesses are not paying enough for others. In recent weeks, about two dozen Republican governors have completed another $300 a year. week in federal unemployment benefits in their states to force others to return to work.
But for many painters, the pandemic has revealed basic flaws in the functioning of the hotel industry; in many cases, they are asked to return to jobs with low labour and safety protections, and for a salary that does not yet reflect the price. of his paintings or of the economic destruction that the pandemic has inflicted on them in their lives. After 15 months of tumult, not everyone is in a position or willing to return to poorly paid paints, are not offering paid leave in poor health and consider it consumable.
For Banks, who has long relied on hotel paintings to increase his income, he hesitates to return to a sector that has done so well and no longer feels that he can count on this line of paintings as he used to.
“It would mean going back to a damaged system,” he said. Why do the rich decide their careers and the rest of us are forced to get the least rewarding jobs we have left?”
The back of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.
Banks, one of many workers laid off at Chateau Marmont in March last year because hotel occupancy rates plummeted. Kurt Petersen, co-chairman of Unite Here Local 11, a union representing Southern California hotel workers, said the castle had not filed severance pay. nor extended their fitness benefits beyond a few weeks.
In the months following Banks’ firing, Los Angeles has gradually become a COVID hot spot. Some of the highest case rates in the city have been recorded in neighborhoods where citizens are more likely to live in tight spaces and paintings in low places. paid “essential” work with little or no coverage at the paint site.
Meanwhile, while thousands of must-have employees became ill and those working in the hotel industry were forced to be between unemployment and the risk of fitness, the lifestyle of the rich and fabulous continued. , celebrities and influential people have been angry, brazenly circumvented by the rules of protection and have defied public grievances lamenting, as Kris Jenner did, that “all we can do is live our lives in the most productive way we know. “California lawmakers, adding Governor Gavin Newsom, attended birthday dinners and traveled with lobthroughists to Hawaii, ignoring the same restrictions they had ordered.
As Banks watched politicians and celebrities roam the city, it seemed to him that the only other people who were absent were the ones who might just get sick. “They can’t put themselves in other people’s shoes,” Banks said.
Banks took safety precautions as seriously as he could, restricting trips to the grocery store, inviting him to socialize and stay home. She fired twice her homework as a recruiter and was fired in July. She waited for the rich and hard of her city, state and country to behave as if COVID-19 did not kill another 4,000 people in the United States on a day at its peak.
But the longer he waited, the worse the stage was. The restaurants were closing, it is unlikely that many will return. The hotels were not operating at full capacity. Nobody hires. Your credit card debt has accumulated.
“You don’t expect anything for nothing, ” he said. I was making an investment in rent. At some point, I thought, if I didn’t make a resolution now, then I probably wouldn’t have any cash to live on.
Banks stayed in Los Angeles for a few more months until she no longer justified paying the small savings she had in rent and bills. In December, he returned to his parents’ home in Stafford, Virginia, with $2,500 in his name. Later this month, after receiving a lawsuit from Wells Fargo for late payments, he filed for bankruptcy.
The banks, which lived on pay before the pandemic, have not worked since August and, after returning to live with their parents, it was not worth contracting the virus and potentially exposing them for $10 an hour in paid work. will be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 until mid-June, she is not looking to return to the workforce.
“Not a full year has passed since I stopped painting, but I feel like a failure, I suppose,” Banks said. “Society makes you feel like you have to paint all the time, you have to produce all the time, you have to do all those things. But in my mind, I say to myself: Well, this is my year to relax. Then, for the rest of my life, I’m going to paint myself.
May Chang
The pandemic has put hotel staff in a wear and tear situation, those who were to continue running were forced into a scenario that jeopardized their physical condition and safety, or that of their families.
May Chang, 52, had to weigh that threat last summer when his former employer, the Ala Moana hotel in Honolulu, asked him if he would be in a position to repaint soon. housekeeper in the luxury resort. Although she desperately needed paintings, Chang, who lived with her husband, two daughters and a grandson, had to take into account the protection of her family.
She and her husband sat down and discussed whether they could go a few more months without their income. There were expenses to pay. His brother in the Philippines trusted the cash he had sent him to remedy his epilepsy; Chang’s unemployment programmes had not yet been approved; her husband, a bank teller, was always going to paint, but with reduced hours and a reduced salary at the age of 65, she had planned to retire soon, but instead she took on her paintings because he and Chang needed fitness insurance.
His unemployment benefits, however, began to come after months of delay, but that was much less than he had earned with his paintings. Returning to the paintings would ease some of the pressure, but COVID cases reached record levels in Oahu that month when His employer contacted her. Chang also participated in the protection of her husband, whose physical fitness disorders would put him in a high-risk situation if he contracted the virus, and his grandson, who was only a few months old.
“I’m so afraid to divulge myself there, especially [in a] hotel, there are all kinds of people from other countries,” he said, so he told his employer that he wanted to go back to the paintings and that he expected them to. keep it in mind, but it’s still not comfortable to do so.
The tourism industry accounts for nearly a quarter of Hawaii’s economy, researcher and economics professor Sumner LaCroix told Hawaii Public Radio; Knowledge from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that more than 50% of the state’s hotel workforce was reduced in the early months of the pandemic.
The state has approached reopening since the advent of vaccines. The state’s travel knowledge shows that Hawaii has noticed nearly twice as many visitors in each of the following 3 months as in January or February. However, in mid-October last year, travelers can simply give up the quarantine era if they turn out to have tested negative for COVID before boarding. The travel testing program was presented as a step towards the reopening of tourism in the state, the policy was rejected by locals who were angry at tourists who disobeyed COVID guidelines. In May, Hawaii implemented a vaccination passport program, which allowed citizens to travel freely in the state. without testing or quarantine, however, it does not yet apply to out-of-state travelers.
For months, Chang had expected hotel occupancy rates to rise so he could get back to work. She and her colleagues were in talks with control of the hotel and her local union on how to prioritize their protection upon their return. in April, Chang waited every day for Ala Moana to ask him to return to work; each and every morning, he would get in position and prepare his uniform, just in case.
On 25 May, however, he won the call and repainted for the first time in more than a year. “I’ve been waiting so long, ” he said. I’m excited. “
The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Ana Cortez worked at the hotel as a housekeeper until April 2020.
Like Chang, Ana Cortez sent cash to El Salvador to get her 87-year-old mother away from hers, but it has become even harder to do after Cortez lost her homework in April 2020 as a housekeeper at the Beverly Hilton, a luxury hotel in Beverly. Hotel in Hills is known for hosting the Golden Globes and other stellar events.
After wasting his job, Cortez, 63, controlled for unemployment benefits; It’s the first time in four decades in the United States that he has to apply for unemployment, he said. She stored and stored anywhere she could and trusted food banks to feed and get cash for her mother, who suffers from epilepsy.
“I’m going to do everything I want to take care of my mother,” Cortez told BuzzFeed News in Spanish.
When the Beverly Hilton called her for a six-day painting in October, she went to paint under a cloud of pain. His brother, who returned to El Salvador to care for his mother, had contracted COVID and died. members of Cortez’s circle of relatives who died of COVID after the deaths of their grandmother and two uncles in El Salvador.
In Los Angeles County, COVID-19 had a disproportionate effect on the Latino population. The virus has killed Latino citizens at a rate 3 times higher than that of white citizens, according to county data, and a recent review by the University of Southern California. found that Latino immigrants ages 20 to 54 are 11 times more likely to die of COVID. -19 than non-Hispanic citizens born in the United States.
Amid one of the worst epidemics of the pandemic, Los Angeles County experienced a 1000% increase in the COVID mortality rate among Latinos from November 2020 to February 2021.
Despite all the monetary difficulties and unmanageable pain of the following year, Cortez, who recently returned to El Salvador, said she was grateful that she and her children, with whom she lives, have not contracted COVID.
“Thank God, no, ” he said. “Me and my children”
Carlos Barrera
Carlos Barrera did not have much retirement plan beyond running until he was 70 and returning to his home country, Guatemala, had focused on paying expenses and rent, and had ensured that his medical wishes and those of his wife were covered. because retirement had to come after everything else.
Barrera, 62, also worked at Chateau Marmont as a valet; enjoyed working, welcoming guests, chatting and parking their extravagant luxury cars; He intended to do so for the rest of his professional life, but in March 2020, Barrera gained a text message. message from his manager informing him that he was fired from the castle because of the pandemic.
It was stunned. After 40 years of being a trusted employee, you may simply not realize that the hotel would treat you with such disrespect.
“I felt really bad,” Barrera said in Spanish. ” I was disappointed, unhappy that they never liked me there. “
Even with his paintings at Chateau Marmont, Barrera was expelled from Los Angeles seven years ago. He and his wife had moved to Santa Clarita to live with their adult children. He lived day by day, he said, and made his life as productive as possible. family. Although his employer proposed a 401 (k) plan, Barrera never contributed; he was already suffering to cope with his weekly income.
When the hotel fired him, Barrera had little time to deal with what had happened before the panic began. March 30, 2020 was the last day he had physical care provided by his employer; you implemented for Medi-Cal, this wouldn’t happen in months. He and his wife, who suffer from diabetes, needed medication for their fitness problems.
Barrera was in a state of constant anxiety in this period, terrified of getting COVID and passing it on to his family, under pressure from the charge of clinic appointments, medications, bills, car bills and his percentage of rent.
Prior to the pandemic, Barrera said he had about $6,000 in savings, some of which he expected to retire from, but his savings were completely depleted last year, he said.
Chateau Marmont’s valet domain in Los Angeles where Barrera worked as a valet. Barrera was fired from the hotel in March last year in reaction to the decrease in hotel occupancy rates.
In December, after months of a task, Barrera got a task as a pizza delivery man, working 25 hours a week. He said his monetary scenario had remained “terrible. ” His last payout, after tax, paid him $500 for two weeks. Every dollar you earn is your percentage of the rent, which costs you $1,000 a month.
The last time Barrera showed up with a Director of Chateau Marmont in May, he was told that there was no position available and that he waits every day for the hotel to re-rent it, especially after the reopening of California on June 15. his former companions have fought publicly to repaint in dignified conditions.
Since mass layoffs in March 2020, former castle painters have sued for discrimination in employment and race, as well as sexual harassment. Bank, the servant of the occasion, told BuzzFeed News that the culture of paintings in the castle “expressly favors white men. “and that men were more likely to be asked than women to make express paintings that would allow them to gain overtime.
With the help of Local 11, the former staff, adding to Barrera, asked hotel visitors to stay at the castle until they “demonstrated a commitment to respect the years of service of their staff by rehiring them in accordance with their legal rights and ensuring that all staff, regardless of race, gender or origin , feels treated with dignity and respect. Several high-level Hollywood figures supported the boycott, according to the union, adding Jane Fonda and Alfonso Cuarón.
Chateau Marmont did not respond to requests for comments related to trial fees, Banks’ accusations about his pictorial culture and the crusade organized through former employees.
Banks wondered if he would take on a task in the hospitality industry when he returned to Los Angeles and what he would do if the Chateau showed up to get back to work. She has been running in the hospitality industry since she was 18, either among other things. or to get additional cash when a wage earner doesn’t pay enough.
But banks have had a front-row seat in the developing abyss among wealthy, low-income citizens over the following year. She has noticed that other wealthy people go on vacation, buy houses and miscarr, at the expense of service personnel, while staff like her have lost everything. He remembered the noises of other people socializing in their multimillion-dollar homes in the Hollywood Hills last year amid the pandemic.
“Sometimes we passed out for a walk at night and listened to the damn dishes and other people talking,” he said, “and you think, are you having dinner at home?”
Most people who spoke to BuzzFeed News said they expected the hotel industry to recover early and return to their duties, but Banks said that after seeing how other people have behaved over the previous year, it’s not optimistic. The country is about to come out of the pandemic and contributing a new general does not mean that banks or millions of people like him can relocate a task for which a decent wage, or any task at all, will be paid.
Banks looked in disgust in February at Congress at a federal minimum wage of $15, calling it “very daunting. “
“If after all this Array . . . they didn’t see any compatibility in paying other people who feed them a decent wage,” Banks said, “they’re just looking to depress other people and force them back to work. “●
This story is a component of the BuzzFeed News Money Week series that examines how the pandemic has replaced the money we make, we should, spend and save.