Cleaner Vacuum : Executives Make Beds, Scrub Toilets as Fears About Immigration Law Causes Shortage of Maids at Hotels

The latest place complaining about the effect of the new immigration law is not a rural lettuce field or sweaty downtown garment factory. It’s a $150-per-room Woodland Hills hotel.

Operators of the Warner Center Marriott said Monday that they are running out of maids for the luxury 473-room hotel because would-be workers are nervous over the 7-week-old law.

Sixteen percent of the hotel’s housekeeping positions are unfilled, they say, causing hotel office workers and executives to be pressed into service to make beds, change linen and scrub toilets.

Confusion Over Amnesty

“People quite frankly are not coming in to apply for jobs,” said Tony Hewes, personnel director for the 15-month-old hotel. “We feel it’s confusion and concern over the new immigration law and amnesty.”

Although other businesses that employ large numbers of Latinos had complained immediately that the law was scaring off workers, hotel operators had predicted little effect on them because they traditionally hire legal aliens. But apprehension over enforcement of the new law apparently has spread to that group, hotel officials say.

At the Warner Center Marriott, managers have been looking at a new labor pool, teen-agers in the West San Fernando Valley, for temporary help. According to hotel officials, however, the youths are staying away for a different reason--they aren’t interested in working during summer vacation.

No Problem Before New Law

“All you have to do is look at the BMWs around here you see kids driving,” one hotel executive said.

Hewes said there never was a problem filling maids’ jobs before the new law, but that there now are eight openings on his 50-member housekeeping staff. Two or three vacancies can cause headaches for the hotel, which is operating at about 75% occupancy, he said.

“Two weeks ago we had a string of five or six days when we were 100% sold out. We used managers and supervisors in the rooms when we got in tight situations,” Hewes said.

“We don’t want to put undue burden on those housekeepers still working. We don’t want them to quit.”

Everyone Lends a Hand

Among those who have jumped in to help clean rooms is Geof Fagan, director of services for the hotel. Workers normally assigned to office duty and lobby work also helped, he said.

“We might help strip a bed or pick up linen. There has been a challenge with this lowered applicant flow,” Fagan said Monday.

The hotel pays its maids up to $6.50 an hour, with a free meal and free parking thrown in. Workers are paid an incentive if they clean more than the 18 rooms a day they are assigned.

A purposefully flexible scheduling policy that allows part-time work and a recruitment effort at local schools has netted only one maid from nearby Canoga Park High School, according to Lois Leitner, the hotel housekeeping manager.

The Warner Center Marriott is not alone with its housekeeper headache. Twenty miles to the west, operators of the 260-room Westlake Plaza Hotel said Monday that they are also feeling the pinch.

“I think a lot of people think they can’t get work if they are aliens who are applying for amnesty,” said Carol Gates, Westlake Plaza’s personnel director. She reported six vacancies on her 42-person housekeeping staff.

“It’s just been in the last couple of weeks that we’ve felt it. Our supervisors are pitching in on the rooms,” she said. “Westlake Village is affluent. The local people don’t want to make beds and scrub toilets.”

At the eastern end of the Valley in Universal City, however, executives at the Los Angeles Registry Hotel said they are fully staffed--at least for now. The 500-room hotel, formerly called the Sheraton Premiere, has 104 maids.

“I do expect problems because we share a common labor market,” said the hotel’s personnel director, Dorthea Balabus. “In fact, transportation to Warner Center is probably easier for workers because we’re up the hill here.”

Hotel executives said the immigration law actually should supply them with more job applicants because they are not prohibited from hiring aliens who are applying for legal status with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Previously, their policy was to require documentation that the applicant was in the country legally.