Cristina Velasquez has cleaned up almost every mess imaginable during her 21 years as a hotel maid, but the scene that awaited her when she opened the door to a room at Hollywood’s Hilton Garden Inn a few months ago still haunts her.
When she entered, the smell of dead animals and the sight of blood on the sheets, a lot of blood, made her turn around. In addition, he found larvae and hypodermic needles. Velasquez reported this to his manager, who simply told him to clean it up as quickly as possible. He had a tight schedule. There was no time to investigate. “It was disgusting,” Velasquez said. “I lost my appetite that day.”
The pandemic added stress to most jobs, but hotel maid jobs, already an occupation with high injury rates, has become increasingly difficult, with fewer workers and shorter deadlines to clean more rooms. messy and dirty than ever.
To reduce the risk of the coronavirus spreading, many of the nation’s largest hotel chains have adopted policies that make daily housekeeping optional, allowing guests to choose how often housekeeping staff enter. to the rooms. In most cases, that means the maids come in only after guests leave, leaving trash and towels soaked from several days.
Although demand for rooms has returned to pre-pandemic levels in Southern California and other parts of the country, hotels did not bring cleaning staff back to 2019 levels.
In Southern California, about 70% of cleaning workers have been rehired since hotels closed and thousands were laid off early in the pandemic, according to Unite Here, Local 11, a union that represents hospitality workers. in southern California and Arizona.
The clutter housekeepers report includes piles of fast food wrappers, dirty towels, half-eaten takeout containers, sticky floors with spilled drinks, and the occasional stool stains on bathroom walls. A housekeeper shared a photo with The Times of a bed covered in hundreds of nitrous oxide capsules, made for whipped cream dispensers, but often used by people who inhale the gas for a quick, dizzying high.
Before the pandemic, female workers entered rooms daily, making cleaning and disinfection easier and faster and preventing the accumulation of clutter and dirt, said Kurt Petersen, co-chair of the union that represents more than 32,000 hospitality workers. and the airport. Under the new policies, fewer maids are now required to perform roughly the same amount of daily cleanings in the same short time frames as before the pandemic, but the increased clutter makes those jobs more labor-intensive, he noted.
“The pandemic has been a non-stop health and safety disaster for housekeepers,” Petersen added. “Cleaning a room that has not been touched for days is not only more difficult and time consuming, but it is much less safe for guests and workers.”
The new conditions are likely to increase the already high injury rates among hotel maids, he added. Academic studies and government labor statistics show that hotel cleaners suffer one of the highest injury rates among service industry workers. Many of the injuries come from lifting mattresses to make beds and dusting furniture.
“Changes in hotel room cleaning practices that create a higher workload – for example, understaffing, less frequent room cleaning resulting in dirtier rooms – are likely to result in increased risks of work-related injuries. for hotel room cleaners, ”said Pamela Vossenas, a researcher and co-author of a 2010 study that found that hotel housekeepers had the highest rate of injury overall and the highest rate of musculoskeletal injuries among women. hotel workers studied.
At the end of each shift, Velasquez, 48, goes home with back pain from moving mattresses and furniture, and knee pain from kneeling to clean bathroom and shower floors. If guests knew how difficult their job is, he said, they wouldn’t leave such a mess.
Riley Wood, general manager of Aimbridge Hospitality, which runs the Hilton Garden Inn Los Angeles / Hollywood, declined to comment.
A spokesperson for Hilton Hotel & Resorts said the company offers guests “choice and control over the level of cleaning services they want” because guests can have “different levels of comfort when someone enters their rooms after check-in.”
Representatives of the hotel industry emphasize that the new cleaning policies are designed to keep workers and guests safe, and that the latter prefer them.
A survey conducted for the American Hotel and Lodging Association found that 81% of guests feel more secure staying at a site if daily cleaning is suspended.
“When it comes to room cleaning, hotels follow both customer preferences and the latest CDC guidelines for hotel employees,” the lodging association said in a statement, citing the recommendation of the Centers for Health. Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that “rooms occupied by the same guest for several days should not be cleaned daily, unless requested.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) disagrees with the CDC’s recommendations. “All programs in which guests can voluntarily waive housekeeping services should be suspended in order to maximize the health and safety of hotel staff and guests alike,” the entity said. WHO policy suggests that guests and staff are at less risk of infection if cleaners wear gloves, masks and other personal protective equipment, and disinfect rooms regularly.
During a recent eight-hour shift, Velásquez took notes and photographs of the job. His manager asked him to clean 14 rooms that day. That included changing bedding, cleaning and sanitizing bathrooms, dusting, replacing dirty towels, vacuuming rugs, and mopping tile and hardwood floors. With a 30 minute lunch break, that would give you just 32 minutes per room.
He started his shift at 8:32 am It took him 45 minutes to clean the first room. Piles of dirty towels littered the bathroom and garbage was strewn all over the room, outside of the cans. It was already late.
The second room was much cleaner, with no trash or towels on the floor, and he was able to complete it in 30 minutes. But at 10 in the morning he had cleaned only two.
Velásquez opened the third room, also very messy and dirty, at 10:12 am and it took until 11 am to clean it up.
It took an hour to clean the fourth room. The most physically demanding part of the job was lifting the mattresses to replace the sheets and vacuuming under the bed, he noted. Most days she does all of this alone.
By the time of the lunch break, he had cleaned only five of the 14 assigned rooms. I was frustrated and tired. Velasquez told her manager repeatedly that the rooms were too messy and dirty for her to meet the daily quota. The answer was to stick to the schedule. “I go from room to room and it’s the same,” he said.
Towards the end of his shift, he entered the bathroom of his twelfth room and discovered that a guest had stained the shower walls with feces. “I don’t know what kind of people stay here,” he said. “Why are they doing this? Maybe they feel they have a right to do it. “
It took him over an hour to clean the room, using bleach to remove the smell from the bathroom.
Several of his co-workers had to come to his aid so that he could finish all 14 rooms by the end of his shift at 5:30 p.m.
This was common: usually, he did not complete his daily homework because everything was too dirty. She worries about losing her job over it, but is hopeful that her hotel workers union will support her.
Generally exhausted when she gets home, Velásquez tries to spend time with her husband and their two sons, ages 20 and 18, at the end of the day. You don’t want them to feel abandoned.
She’s not sure how long she’ll be able to keep up, but she knows she can’t stop. You must work to support your family. “I worry because I know I need the job,” Velásquez said. “But the more I work, the more tasks they have for me.”
To read this note in Spanish, click here.