I’ve served time in hospitality – years in bars, pubs, restaurants and cafes as well as a short stint in a hotel - but only ever as a bartender, kitchen assistant, deli worker or waitress, and occasionally in room service. Undertaking the role of a room attendant was a first for me. I wanted to do it to understand it because I want to see the hospitality sector here in London - or anywhere for that matter - organised. I want people to be unionised, to have collective bargaining and representation and rights on their own terms, and not those of the phoney workplace committees that go by all kinds of weird and wonderful names, established by hotel management and human resources to essentially keep unions out.
We need hotel unions and, New York City and Finland are great examples, where working in a hotel is a good, dignified, even sought after job. Hotel workers in New York are paid $24 per hour, they can afford to send their kids to university, they have decent, steady contracts with sick pay and good holidays and they’re not worked to the absolute bone. Union density is over 90%. In London it’s about 1%.
