Maria Medina, 40, a former housekeeper at the Hilton Long Beach, speaks during a Wednesday, April 27, news conference, detailing how she was fired, along with four other housekeepers, earlier this month after several of them complained about working conditions to hotel management. Photo courtesy of Unite Here Local 11.
UPDATE Thursday, June 16, 3:45pm | A fundraiser for the “Hilton 5” held Wednesday night at Pizza Pi by the restaurant and the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community raised more than $550 through the sale of raffle tickets and hundreds of dollars more in food and beverage sales, according to the union assisting the five fired Hilton housekeepers.
About 100 people turned out to the event, where local musicians entertained patrons and items donated by local businesses, including gift certificates to Portfolio Coffeehouse and Fingerprints Music Store, were raffled off between music sets.
The total amount raised thanks to Pizza Pi’s offer to donate to the women 15 percent of all food and beverage sales made June 15 between the hours of 6 and 9 p.m. will be announced Friday, said Leigh Shelton of Unite Here Local 11.
Editor’s note: A previous version of the above post incorrectly stated that the union represents the workers. The union is actually only assisting them.
UPDATE Thursday, May 19, 1:01pm | The union representing five women who claim they were fired from their housekeeping jobs at the Hilton Long Beach & Executive Meeting Center after complaining about unfair working conditions has filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board on their behalf, a union spokeswoman said.
Leigh Shelton of Unite Here Local 11 said that the unfair labor practices charges against HEI Hotels and Resorts, the hotel’s parent company, were filed with the NLRB Thursday morning.
“The housekeepers are asking a regional office of the NLRB to investigate their unfair labor practice charge, and if the allegations are determined to have merit, to issue a complaint,” Shelton said.
The union alleges that the hotel fired the five housekeepers two days after three of them had confronted hotel management regarding what they perceived to be unfair working conditions. Some of the women had also recently cooperated with state investigators who are conducting an ongoing probe into the fired housekeepers’ employment arrangement.
“Employers are prohibited from retaliating against employees for speaking up about working conditions to hotel management or a state agency,” Shelton said.
The hotel’s human resources director said in late April that the hotel had not recently fired any workers. He said the five women worked for a company the hotel had subcontracted with and that the hotel had recently ceased subcontracting with that agency. He also said the hotel had offered the women to apply with the hotel directly for similar positions.
The fired workers said they were interviewed and hired at the hotel and were not aware of any type of arrangement with a subcontractor until they were later told they would be paid by a subcontractor.
“After four years of hard work for less pay than most Hilton housekeepers, we finally spoke up about the unjust conditions,” said Veronica Flores, one of the fired housekeepers, in a statement. “And in response the hotel management thinks they can just throw us out like garbage. HEI cannot do this. We are human. We have rights.”
Aril 27, 5:01pm | Five hotel workers formerly employed by the Hilton Long Beach & Executive Meeting Center in downtown Long Beach said Wednesday that they were recently terminated after three of them complained to hotel management about unfair working conditions.
Maria Medina, 40, said that she and two other housekeepers met with a human resources manager at the hotel in early April to discuss what she described as “erratic scheduling” and other unfair employment practices. A “mere two days later,” she said, the three, along with two others, were fired.
All five were told they worked for a subcontractor, she said.
Medina, who worked at the hotel for four years, said that although she was interviewed and hired at the hotel, she was later told that she would be paid by a subcontractor. She said that payroll taxes were never deducted from her paychecks and that she was never offered any of the benefits, such as health insurance and paid time off, that were enjoyed by housekeepers who worked for the hotel directly.
“There needs to be some kind of reform. Housekeeping work is taxing. It slowly weighs on your body,” Medina said. “If there are going to be [subcontracting] agencies, they should at least be fair. They should at least be watched closely by the government.”
Medina and the four other fired housekeepers gathered in front of the 701 E. Ocean Blvd. hotel Wednesday morning and shared their story during a news conference before demanding that they be rehired as permanent employees.
According to information provided by Leigh Shelton of Unite Here Local 11, a union that has been working to organize housekeepers at the hotel since 2009, each of the fired housekeepers had worked at the hotel for anywhere from two to four years, but the hotel considered them “temporary agency” employees.
Shelton, a spokeswoman for the union, said that even though they worked alongside permanent housekeepers, the women were paid under the table from a “rarely-seen individual who, in theory, runs a temporary employment agency.” The checks, however, were distributed by hotel managers, she said.
“I do the same work, wear the same uniform and take orders from the same managers,” Medina said during the conference. “Why am I an ‘agency’ worker? Clearly, so I can be paid less and be treated as a lower class employee.
“As I was getting fired last week, it became clear to me that this hotel keeps unfair positions like mine to save money,” Medina continued.
The Rev. Jerry Stinson, pastor at First Congregational Church of Long Beach, attended the conference to show his support for the hotel workers.
“If there’s one word you cannot link to this Hilton hotel, it’s the word ‘compassion’,” Stinson said.
Representatives from the offices of Councilmen Patrick O’Donnell and Steven Neal were on hand, as were staffers from Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal’s office. Each of the elected officials were said to have sent letters of support for the workers to the Hilton requesting that the hotel immediately rehire the women as permanent employees.
Ken Melinie, the human resources director at Hilton Long Beach, told L.A Now on Wednesday afternoon that the housekeepers were employed by an outside agency. The hotel has not terminated any employees, he said, though it did cease contracting with an agency it had been working with.
He said the hotel ensures that all workers are paid properly regardless of whether they are permanent employees or work for an agency.
Melinie said the five housekeepers were “outstanding, hardworking individuals” and that he met with them as a courtesy even though they did not work directly for the hotel. All were told they’d be welcome to apply for open positions with the hotel once their agency’s contract ended, he reportedly added.
“I’m kind of disappointed that none of them applied,” he told the Times. “But that offer certainly still stands.”
Shelton said that since their termination, several of the fired housekeepers have met with state investigators who are conducting an ongoing probe into the legality of their employment arrangement at the Hilton.
According to the union, which represents more than 20,000 hotel and food service workers in Los Angeles and Orange counties, both the California Employment Development Department and the California Department of Labor Standards Enforcement are investigating tax and employment practices at the Hilton Long Beach and nearby Embassy Suites Irvine.
The Hilton Long Beach is owned and operated by HEI Hotels and Resorts, as were the Embassy Suites up until last November. The privately held company has come under fire in recent years for allegedly mistreating employees and stymying staffers’ efforts to unionize.
HEI sold the the 293-bed Embassy Suites for an undisclosed price just a couple of months after that hotel’s staff filed complaints with the state demanding backpay for legally-mandated breaks the hotel allegedly denied them. HEI at the time said the sale of the hotel had nothing to do with the complaint and subsequent employee-urged boycott of the Orange County hotel.
Shelton, the union spokeswoman, told the Long Beach Post Wednesday evening that a group of community members who support the housekeepers entered the hotel following the news conference Wednesday morning to deliver a letter and speak to management. Their efforts were unsuccessful.
“After about 10 minutes and no manager to be found, everybody was kicked out,” Shelton said.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story failed to directly quote the phrase “mere two days” in the second paragraph.
Five housekeepers who say they were fired by the Hilton Long Beach after complaining about working conditions are joined by some of their supporters who attended a news conference staged outside the hotel Wednesday, April 27, to call attention to the situation. Photo courtesy of Unite Here Local 11.