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Group Calls on Hotels to Improve Conditions for Workers
Coalition for a New Century Wants to See Area Around
LAX Prosper
Our Weekly - February 9, 2006
By Dennis Freeman
LAX is again at the center of a controversy. This time the issue does not involve removing people from their homes and schools so that the airport can expand. It involves hotel workers, tourism and much sought improvement of a major thoroughfare leading to one of the largest airports in the country.
The Alliance for a New Economy recently released a report for the Coalition for a New Century in which these issues can be fixed, should Los Angeles and neighboring cities such as Lennox and Inglewood actually want to improve the economy around LAX and along the corridor of Century Blvd.
Tourism and hospitality is a big part of that plan. But improvement in wages for workers who are employed at hotels close to the airport and are based on Century Blvd. is a vital issue that needs to be resolved if any area revitalization is to take place.
Hospitality workers account for over 180,000 jobs in Los Angeles, with 3,500 workers making a living at the 13 hotels that service LAX. According to LAANE, business is doing great in regards to tourism. In the past two years, occupancy at Century Blvd. hotels has risen 16%.
But according to LAANE’s report, the hotel workers employed around LAX are getting the short end of the stick. Hotel employees working on Century Blvd. have the lowest wages of any sub-market in a region, according to 2002 data used for the report.
Substantiating this is a report released by the Economic Roundtable, which states these workers have the shortest work year of any region. The problem stems from the fact that these hotels are unionized, which explains wage and benefits disparity.
The Sheraton Universal Hotel provides free family coverage in regards to health and dental insurance to its employees and has a starting hourly rate of $11.42 for a housekeeper. In comparison, the Westin LAX Hotel, which is not unionized, charges its housekeepers $206 to $290 a month for health and dental benefits, while paying them wages ranging from $7.25 to $10.15 an hour.
The wages and benefits of hotel workers around the LAX corridor have an impact on other cities as well. The average hotel worker in the cities of Hawthorne, Lennox and Inglewood made roughly $16,000 per year, according to a 2000 study, about 20% less than hotel workers as a whole make in Los Angeles County.
Low wages turn into a high rate of poverty and crime. And in these cities as well as around the airport, the crime rate escalates.
One in four people in these surrounding areas live below the federal poverty line. More than 40% of the children who live in these areas come from poor households.
The violent crime rate for these areas is five times higher than the county as a whole. The murder rate in Lennox is seven times greater than the entire Los Angeles County.
According to the report, over 13,500 tourism industry workers live in Hawthorne, Lennox and Inglewood.
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For over 20 years, Isabel “Segunda” Brentner has worked at the LAX Hilton, keeping her focus on her family and her job. “My priorities [were] to help my family,” says Brentner, who, along with raising her own children, cared for both her father and grandmother when they were ill. 
Enedina Alvarez, a 54-year-old single parent, says she must be both mother and father to her teenage children. Yet, with two jobs, she has barely enough money to house, feed and clothe them—and precious little time to spend with them. Although she receives health insurance through her job, she cannot afford to insure her children. Alvarez says, “I pray to God that my kids do not get sick because I cannot pay the medical bills.” 
Nearly all hotel housekeepers are women. The majority are women of color and immigrants.
