New Orleans Workers Seek Share of Tourism Boom

NEW ORLEANS —  Hotel maid Aquanita Smith was part of the tourist boom in the city of Mardi Gras. That is, until she needed three days to help care for her newborn granddaughter.

Despite glowing performance evaluations at the Wyndham Hotel, she was fired.

“They expect the workers to be slaves,” said Smith, who claims she was dismissed for taking the time off. “That’s the kind of respect these people [management] have for the workers.”

There are 174 hotels and motels in the tourist-laden New Orleans region, but only one--the Fairmont--has a unionized rank-and-file staff. Three unions with backing from the AFL-CIO are running a major organizing drive in the city’s hospitality industry.

The Wyndham, the first hotel targeted for organization, declined to comment on Smith’s case. Instead, it answered with a letter that said “outsiders agitators” are responsible for stirring up its staff with talk of a union.

If the unions succeed, the implications could be far-reaching since tourism, hotels and casinos have been one of the fastest-growing sectors of employment nationwide.

Nationwide, only 11% of hospitality workers are unionized, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The national AFL-CIO said that although it doesn’t break it down by cities, heavy concentrations of unionized hospitality workers are in New York and Las Vegas.

New Orleans is the nation’s 26th largest hotel market with more than 27,000 rooms, according to the industry group Smith Travel Research. For the first six months of 1998, the average room rate was $115 nightly--highest in the South and the fifth-highest in the U.S.

But workers say the tourism bounty is not trickling down to those who staff the hotel bars and restaurants, haul the luggage, clean the guest rooms, and perform various services at the city’s convention center and the Superdome.

New Orleans housekeepers make an average of $5.48 per hour, compared with $15.24 for union housekeepers in New York, the AFL-CIO said.

And, not surprisingly, there is a wide pay gap from top-paid managers to housekeepers. Nationwide, general managers earn from $42,900 to $92,800 annually; full-time housekeepers can expect $12,700 to $13,900 annually, the American Hotel and Motel Assn. said.

But union organizer Wade Rathke said the wages for lower-paid workers are misleading, and that they generally make even less.

“In this industry, full-time work is a precious commodity. A lot of time, hotels are not fully occupied and the work schedules are cut back,” he said.

Bill Langkopp, executive vice president of the New Orleans Hotel-Motel Assn., said that although pay varies from property to property, “by and large, we believe people are being paid a fair wage for the job they do.”

The expanding hospitality industry also provides workers with a chance to learn the business and advance, he said.

“We hire many people at a low-entry level wage, but create an opportunity for them to improve themselves,” Langkopp said.

Langkopp said increased competition--both within New Orleans and from the casino-laden Mississippi Gulf Coast--will drive up wages for hospitality workers in the region. The New Orleans area is planning to add 2,000 hotel rooms within two years, while casino-hotels have held job fairs in New Orleans in an attempt to lure away workers, he said.