A controversial Honolulu City Council bill that would have mandated
employee callback rules for hotels and required them to clean occupied hotel rooms won’t be heard Thursday.
Bill 80, a measure pushed by hospitality workers union Unite Here Local 5, was expected to be on Thursday’s agenda after it passed out of the Council Executive Matters and Legal Affairs Committee.
The bill would have required hotels to recall a set number of employees based on hotel occupancy, with priority given to those with the most seniority. It also would have mandated that hotels employ enough housekeepers to “clean and sanitize every occupied guest room every day.”
Honolulu City Council Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi said Monday that she did not schedule a hearing for Bill 80 due to legal concerns. Instead, Kobayashi said the Council will hear Resolution
20-296, which, like Bill 80, was introduced by Councilman Tommy Waters.
The resolution urges “the hotel industry to work with hotel employees to address return to work procedures to ensure a fair and equitable right to recall for hotel employees who have lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic and establish comprehensive safety and protective equipment standards to ensure safe working conditions for these employees and hotel guests.”
Councilman Ron Menor, chairman of the Council Executive Matters and
Legal Affairs Committee, said a bill that a committee has recommended for passage on second reading normally gets placed on the subsequent full Council meeting agenda. However, Menor said the Council chairman still has the prerogative to keep the bill off the agenda.
“We are holding the bill. We’re not killing the bill. We are having the legality looked into,” Kobayashi said. “We don’t want to go against our own legal people. The city’s Corporation Counsel and the Office of Council Services brought forward concerns.”
Mufi Hannemann, president and CEO of the Hawai‘i Lodging &Tourism Association, said, “We’re obviously very happy and very grateful that the Council chair is not placing Bill 80 on the agenda to move forward. It was an overreach, and it would have had negative ramifications for our industry.”
Hannemann said the
industry still hasn’t come back from a COVID-related 72% drop in Hawaii’s visitor arrivals through September.
“We need to be focusing our efforts on reopening as opposed to worrying about this dark cloud that was over us. It would have
been another obstacle to economic recovery,” Hannemann said. “To me there was no compromise on the bill, which would have tied the city up in
lawsuits. The resolution is something that we are more willing to look at because it doesn’t have the force of law.”
However, Menor said he’s still hopeful that City Council might review a new draft of Bill 80 before the end of the year.
Menor said that he’s proposed new amendments,
including one that would address a concern raised by hotel executives that they should not be required to
rehire employees in segments of hotels — for instance, restaurants — that have not reopened. Menor said another proposed amendment would make it so hotel guests are not forced to accept room cleaning if they decline such services. He’s also open to additional amendments,
he said.
Menor said Bill 80 could be placed on the Nov. 10
special Council meeting’s agenda. If the Council passed Bill 80 on second reading on Nov. 10, Menor said it would be referred back to the zoning committee, which could hear the bill at its November meeting. If the zoning committee recommends approval of the bill, Menor said it could go to a final vote at the last December Council meeting.
Menor said that he
“understands that Councilman Waters may have been concerned that we may not have the necessary five votes at the Council to pass Bill 80 and so therefore, his resolution would be a
fallback and provide an
alternative vehicle for the Council to consider the
issues raised by Bill 80.”
Kobayashi said she sees Resolution 20-296 as a possible tool to convey that the City Council wants to see “both sides working
together.”
“We’re very concerned with unemployment in the hospitality sector and the economic health of both the hotels and the employees,” she said. “Certainly, both sides can try to come to the table and make this work. The economy is
suffering, and many workers are worried about their positions.”
Local 5 Political Director Cade Watanabe said some 1,500 Local 5 members sent in testimony for Bill 80 and support Menor’s quest to give it another look.
“We recognize that if the Council can pull an item off an agenda, then they can put it back on,” Watanabe said. “We are supportive of the City Council taking steps to minimize legal risks, but we don’t support replacing the bill with a resolution. From the perspective of our members, you either stand with hotel workers or hotel bosses. ”
Hawaii’s slow tourism
recovery has meant most of Local 5’s 8,000 hospitality workers haven’t returned to work, and conditions are growing more urgent, he said.
Roughly 5,000 of those workers have received letters from the union’s Health and Welfare Fund informing them that they are losing their health insurance, Watanabe said. The fund kicked in for some employees after their employer’s stopped medical benefits.
Cecile Daniels, a housekeeper who was furloughed in March from her full-time job at the Hilton Garden Inn, said conditions are growing dire for a lot of workers “who don’t have any more medical, and now their
unemployment is pau.”
Daniels said she’s now supporting her husband and daughter on a part-time job at the Hale Koa. She was able to add family health care coverage to her part-time job, but the Hale Koa takes out more than $300 a paycheck to cover it.
“I’m only bringing home like $100 per paycheck because I’m taking so much out,” Daniels said. “I only have 20 hours a week of work. It worries me because I’m a little lower in seniority, and maybe I don’t have enough hours. How can I pay my rent and everything? It’s going to be hard.”
