‘Things have got to change’

London’s hospitality workers protested with outrage over the ‘unethical’ working conditions of the capital’s hotel industry yesterday evening, following the launch of Unite’s hard-hitting report Unethical London.

Unite hotel and hospitality worker members held the demonstration to mark the launch of the report which exposes London as one of the most ‘unethical’ tourist destinations in the world in its exploitation of workers through low pay and poor working practices.

One hotel worker, who is 56 years old, said she attended the protest because she feels undervalued and overworked in her job and is close to breaking point.

“It’s almost amusing that someone is paying £800 for a hotel room, but the person who cleans the room is only paid £5,” she said.

“I feel like giving up, to tell you the truth. It’s very hard work, changing the beds and you must do it very fast and you must give quality, so sometimes it is impossible to finish the work in a good way because it is too much.

“The hotel won’t employ more workers because they want to save money, so it’s a terrible circle,” she said.

The protest began underneath the London Eye at around 5 pm yesterday (August 24), and moved along to a Premier Inn on Belvedere Road, where protesters chanted and sang for rights and respect into the main lobby and far down the road.

The demonstration stopped outside the Premier Inn to expose its anti-union practices. Despite being the largest part of multi-national hospitality company, Whitbread – who will soon become part of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) pledging respect for workers’ rights – Premier Inn does not recognise its employees’ rights to unionise.

Respect

Ewa Jasiewicz, speaking for the Unite hotel worker’s branch, believes it’s outrageous that this can happen and wants to see hotel chains like Premier Inn start to respect its workforce.

“Premier Inn refuses to allow union access, they don’t recognise collective bargaining, and are not respecting worker’s rights to organise, to have collective representation or a collective voice.

“There are so many hotel chains like this and we’re not going to let Whitbread and Premier Inn get the Ethical Trading Initiative kite mark and the respect from other industry players when they actually don’t respect worker’s rights.”

Unite national officer Rhys McCarthy said, “Workers in this industry deserve better, they deserve a living wage and they deserve not to be bullied or worked to death. Things have got to change.”

Hospitality workers from different parts of the industry joined the protest in solidarity with hotel workers, as they too are facing exploitative working conditions.

One protester, who works as a waitress in a fine dining London restaurant, said:

“The hospitality sector is the fourth largest industry in the UK, but it mainly employs migrant workers and is the sector that is the least unionised, so it’s hard to keep existing rights, let alone ask for improvements of rights within the workplace.

“I believe I’m the only Unite member where I work, the other people I work with are mainly migrants so they might not have been in the country for that long and maybe don’t understand what the union is or what it can provide for us,” she said.

“I think unions should be recognised in every workplace, as soon as an employee signs a contract, those rights should be set out by the employer.

“It should be law that every new employee, in every industry, should be given the option to become a member of a union when they sign their contract – that would be a step forward.”

Dave Turnbull, Unite regional officer, said it was important the hotel industry sees that despite their refusal to work with the union, Unite will continue to support hospitality workers until their rights are respected.

“We’re not going away and we’re determined to make London an ethical city,” Dave said.

“This will require hotels to recognise trade unions, to establish collective bargaining and to have a dialogue with us.”