Kristen Gyles | ‘Take it or leave it’

Earlier this week, a prominent hotel was left in a royal mess when its workers staged a protest which significantly disrupted the hotel’s service for more than two days. On Monday, videos surfaced of what looked like hundreds of irate workers standing together in protest over low wages, unpaid overtime and general poor treatment. For example, it has been alleged that workers are penalised for drinking the hotel’s water and that food is provided for staff only on a ‘first come, first served’ basis since it often runs out quickly.

What was the result of the strike? Empty food trays and coffee dispensers and long lines of guests standing with empty plates in hand, hoping to scrape up whatever they could find in a dining room of hardly anything. Barely any food had been prepared and videos showed local guests binging on patties since they were not getting fed at the hotel.

Imagine being at a hotel, hungry. Sigh.

The hotel’s food service was not the only aspect of its operations that was negatively affected by the strike. One guest who shared her experience online said at one point she couldn’t get any tissue, towels or drinking water. She mentioned that lifeguards were not on duty and that all the restaurants were closed. It sounded like a pitiful experience for the unfortunate guests who chose the wrong hotel at the wrong time.

FEW THINGS CLEAR

A few things are clear from this incident. First, the hotel staff had been disgruntled for some time. The issues they cited did not originate last week. Further, no sensible-minded worker gets up and walks off the job out of boredom. The fact that a significant proportion of the hotel’s 1,000-plus member staff complement took unified action against the hotel’s management is very telling.

The management has rightly apologised to the staff and has admitted that staff complaints could have been addressed more appropriately. Since the strike, they have also committed to making several adjustments to improve the experience of staff, including increasing staff salaries and allocating additional funds towards improvements to the canteen arrangement for staff. Fortunately, this will reduce the gravity of the fallout the hotel must already be experiencing. But unfortunately, so much damage has already been done to the hotel’s reputation that it will hardly emerge from this fiasco a winner.

In the short term, the hotel will have no choice but to compensate guests for the fact that they paid top dollar, only to spend time in a food-less, vibes-less, worker-less hotel.

In the long term, many of these disappointed guests will likely choose to vacation elsewhere, and if they do return, it may only be to make legal demands. Others have taken to social media to complain about how bitter their experience was, so it is reasonable to assume they won’t be leaving a five-star review. Many guests are not just upset that they had an unpleasant stay. They are upset that the hotel’s poor treatment of staff is what ultimately ruined their stay. We know this because amid the frowns and stern faces present at the strike were hotel guests who stood in solidarity with the workers.

WIN SUPPORT

Imagine that. Whatever it is that made these workers walk off the job to hold up placards, it was convincing enough to win the support of the very guests who were disadvantaged.

What is the point here? The hotel needs its workers – certainly just as much as the workers need the hotel. Employees took industrial action for two days and may suffer lost income for two days. But it may take the hotel months to recover from the financial fallout associated with the strike. This situation teaches us, and hopefully hoteliers specifically, a valuable lesson.

There are many labourers within our society who are consistently disregarded and whose contributions are assumed to be worth not much more than a few shillings, but in reality, they are critical to the workplace ecosystem. Without them, the show cannot go on. They are the backbone of many businesses. This means there has to be a symbiotic relationship between these employees and their employers, built on mutual respect. Instead, it seems there may be an unstated assumption floating around within the tourism industry, that hospitality workers are at the mercy of hoteliers who can set the rules of engagement unilaterally. This week we learned otherwise.

Instead of voluntarily choosing to consider the demands of the workers and adjust working conditions to meet the basic needs of the staff, the hotel waited until workers were at their wits’ end, when tensions were high and guests were hungry, to be forced into negotiations with its workers. Why?

Sadly, in response to news of the strike, some Jamaicans have repeated the age-old accountability cop-out – “If you don’t like your job, then leave and go elsewhere”. This is the pretentious argument that many business owners use to exploit and manipulate their workers. They are well aware that in a job market in which many people are underemployed and/or unhappy with the terms of their employment, it is not always easy for people to switch jobs. Knowing this, they think it is clever to adopt a “take it or leave it” type of mentality. Not cool.

This week the workers are the ones who made demands and said “take it or leave it”. Fair or very fair?

Kristen Gyles is a free-thinking public affairs opinionator. Send feedback to kristengyles@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com