Community Demands Long Beach Hilton and other Luxury Hotels Pay Workers a Living Wage, Offer Affordable Health Insurance

Community Members Deliver Letters to Hotel Industry to Live Up to Responsibilities to Long Beach and Pay Living Wages to Boost Local Economy

LONG BEACH-- Over a hundred community, religious and student leaders joined hotel workers today in Long Beach to deliver letters to four Long Beach hotels including the Long Beach Hilton, Hyatt, Westin and Marriott. Councilwoman Tonia Reyes Uranga joined the community in calling for a fair return on the public’s investment in the form of good jobs and better working conditions for Long Beach residents.

The letters circulated to the hotels asked for living wages for hotel workers so as to lift the local economy and not contribute to poverty and the need for public assistance in our communities, provide affordable family health insurance to their employees, create job access for community members and job training programs for local residents, provide safeguards to hotel workers during difficult economic times, honor worker rights to organize and reduce or eliminating the use of toxic chemicals especially in cleaning agents and to provide safeguards to ensure safe and healthy working conditions for all employees.

“We know that in order to lift ourselves out of this economic crisis, we will all need to make sacrifices. Long Beach taxpayers have already made tremendous sacrifices by investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the tourism industry and directly in these hotels. We ask that these hotels live up to their end of the partnership and invest in our communities by investing in their workers,” said Gary Hytrek, Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, Long Beach.

Long Beach taxpayers have invested over $750 million into the tourism industry in hopes of creating a new source of revenue that would revitalize the city and bring new jobs to the city’s residents. Although the city has succeeded in attracting an increased number of visitors, the industry has failed to offer a fair return on the public’s investment and has contributed to poverty in our community through poverty wage jobs, which leave many workers dependant on public assistance to survive.

Although the city has succeeded in attracting an increased number of visitors, the industry has failed to offer a fair return on the public’s investment and has contributed to poverty in our community through poverty wage jobs, which leave many workers dependant on public assistance to survive. “I have always taken pride in working hard to provide for my family. But with the wages I am paid at the Long Beach Hilton, I was not able to afford to pay for health insurance for my children and they had to use Medi-Cal. At one point even though I was working full time, I had to apply for food stamps. All we ask is that we get paid a fair wage for our hard work, so that we can provide for our families,” said Maria Patlan a housekeeper at the Long Beach Hilton.

This action follows a Community Town Hall at Cal-State Long Beach and report released two months ago by the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy on behalf of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community that found that the city had not received an adequate return on its investment in the tourism industry. The study can be downloaded at: www.goodjobslongbeach.org.