File photo.

People Post is a space for opinion pieces, letters to the editor and guest submissions from members of the Long Beach community. The following is an op-ed submitted by Naida Tushnet, a Long Beach resident and member of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Long Beach Post.

As a community member who was actively involved in working for an ordinance that guarantees worker safety in the hotel industry, I was dismayed by the OP-ED written by Al Austin and Suzie Price justifying their vote to defeat the ordinance. I was even more dismayed by their votes—and the rationale for the votes—on the ordinance itself.

Let me start with Austin’s statement at City Council: “What’s the hurry?” When he said it, I remembered when clergy and others wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during the Birmingham, AL, protests. Dr. King wrote: “While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities “unwise and untimely,” and then went on to explain what others have called, “the urgency of now.” The hurry, Councilmember Austin, is that every day hotel workers are exposed to unsafe conditions. Sexual assault and harassment are brushed aside when workers, who want to change the floors they clean after an uncomfortable encounter, are not allowed to do so.

Our nation is now witnessing a barrage of information about a sexual predator in the movie industry, and I shake my head when people ask on TV, Twitter, and Facebook, “Why didn’t they come forward earlier?” Perhaps they didn’t come forward because when people do, their experiences are dismissed as “anecdotal”, not data-driven. I want to be clear—I am a social scientist by profession. I believe in data. Data, however, are not enough when people are fearful of the consequences of reporting. Then, we need to listen to their fears—and their hopes that City Council will support them in their daily struggles.

Councilmember Price asks for data tying increased sexual assault to high workloads. But that’s not the claim that was made. The issue is that both sexual harassment and assault and high workloads are threats to worker safety. Excessive workloads have been shown to increase the risks for housekeepers developing hypertension and anxiety (American Journal of Industrial Medicine). Furthermore, as mattresses get heavier (and as a frequent hotel guest, I appreciate the better mattresses), back problems and repetitive stress disorders increase.

Excessive workloads not only threaten worker safety, they threaten the safety of hotel guests, as well. A few years ago, a news report went viral. It showed all the places in a hotel room where germs were breeding, and a 2009 study found rhinovirus germs on 50 percent of hotel door knobs and about 33 percent of hotel telephones. More time to clean rooms with a sanitation agent would decrease the spread of such viruses.

The failure to pass an ordinance was a major setback for Long Beach workers—and for visitors. The resolution that passed was not a “strong statement” in support of anything. It was a cop-out, avoiding facts and experiences of workers.

I hope Long Beach residents will see through the excuses and help pass significant protections for hotel workers.

Naida Tushnet is a Long Beach resident who is a member of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community.