Concealed within magnificent luxury hotel establishments as well as more modest establishments lie exhausting daily tasks, mechanical repetition of movements, movement of heavy furniture, pressurized work patterns, contact with toxic products and a long list of other personal risk situations including sexual harassment.
Furthermore, taking advantage of the international financial crisis, employers are downgrading conditions of work, either directly or through outsourcing. This situation has led to a decline in already low wages and an intensification of the work.
Housekeepers also suffer from the effects of gender inequality, a further burden on their difficult working conditions.
We in the IUF-UITA are issuing a new challenge, a challenge to give these workers healthy and safe conditions of work, launching the campaign
Dignity for Hotel Housekeepers
- To identify "good practices" which can serve as examples, so that we can clearly see those companies with the worst conditions of work on which to target our organising resources to remedy that situation.
- To identify specific cases which clearly support our concerns, taking examples from each region to show the global nature of this threat.
- To denounce these conditions of work to global political and labour organizations in our sphere (ILO - UNWTO)
- To engage hotel companies and institutions in developing new policies to prevent workers getting physically and psychologically injured.
- To improve the working conditions of these workers.
- Through our website, to dedicate a specific page where we will keep this demand alive as a key element to generate discussion among affected workers.
- To increase union membership and activism amongst housekeepers in each IUF region.