Posted by Steven Miles, LHMU
I was in a meeting with Hilton management today and it felt like we were talking a different language.
We’re supposed to be negotiating a new agreement, one that should deliver a productivity increase for the hotel and a pay rise for workers. This is the brave new world of industrial relations, Rudd style, where we all sit in a room and find solutions to industries’ problems.
So I have suggested the workers get together and talk about what should change to make the Hilton a better hotel and a better place to work. I’ve suggested it should be the union’s role to facilitate that. In fact we’ve proposed an extensive and proactive process to achieve an outcome both workers and management can be happy with.
Their adviser, from the same employer union that lobbied for a $0 increase for workers, keeps asking me to point to where in the law it says they have to do that.
They proudly announced their agreements in other states had passed the “no disadvantage test”. That’s right, it’s a big deal when their agreement is deemed not to leave employees worse off. There was no consideration that employees should be left better off.
That’s the same agreement almost two thirds of workers at this site voted against. Why? They didn’t think 1 per cent, roughly 15 cents an hour, was much of a pay rise. They thought averaging weekly hours into a 152 hour month would leave them worse off. Workers at this hotel want to see real change, not penny pinching.
I’ve been saying I believe that agreement “dodgy”. I’ve said that about similar agreements at hotels all over Australia. But at Hilton it really seems to get up their nose.
A Hilton rep in the room challenged my assertion- “how can you call them dodgy,” he protested. “It’s legal isn’t it. Admit it, its legal!”
And that’s when I realised what’s wrong with this industry: they think the law tells them what they should do, when really it just tells them what they have to do. Like all laws, the Fair Work Act regulates the bare minimum. Responsible employers, dare I say ethical ones, set a standard much higher than the law.
Just like ethical citizens set their standards above the law. The law doesn’t regulate manners, or respect, but we adhere to those behaviours because that’s a test of who we are. There’s a whole range of societal norms that encourage behaviour better than the law stipulates, including the judgment of our peers if we fail to live up to their expectations.
The hospitality industry is a bit like the wild-west. So long as it’s legal, in the strictest sense, you can do what you like. Nobody will judge you, so long as it’s legal. They wont judge you because they let the law set their behaviour too.
The look of confusion that comes across the face of these mid-range bosses whenever I suggest they do something the letter of the law might not require them to do (no matter how reasonable it would seem to a casual observer) speaks volumes about the industry.
When I describe the award as the minimum the QHA representative gets offended. “It’s the standard.” When I say its only the standard in this industry, she asks me why we need an award at all. 2009 and not only do we have employers advocating abolition of such a fundamental pillar of our regulation of work, they can also not see that a 5 star hotel should aim to be productive enough to pay their workers more than the bare minimum.
It’s ironic that whenever we meet with senior managers (above hotel level) they bemoan the industries’ reputation as a bad employer and they ask why the union won’t help them build public and political support. Of course they also claim they are the one operator that values their people.
And hence the problem. They don’t see any commercial value in doing anything more than they are required to by law. And while that’s the case the community will continue to see hospitality jobs for exactly what they are, minimum wage jobs.
For all their special programs (I’ve never worked in an industry with more fancy names for their otherwise unappreciated workers) they just can’t see a way to use bargaining to deliver real pay rises. Since 1993 employers and workers in just about every other sector of the economy have done just that. But in hospitality there is no ambition to get above the minimum at all.
All they aspire to is the legal minimum, which is a shame for their workers but ultimately the real shame is for them and their investors. For until they work together, improve skills and training, safety and wages community and political support will never come.
No amount of screaming about the sky falling in will cause the government to spend taxpayers’ money saving an industry that the community doesn’t support.
Of course the same attitude applies when it comes to the environment. For an industry with a lot to lose if we don’t address climate change, hotels have done little to address their own environmental impact. Why? Because they don’t have to.
It clear the only way to get these hotels to do anything more than the law requires is for us consumers to start demanding it. If together we can build a movement of ethical travellers willing to make their booking decision, maybe even pay a little more, to stay in a hotel that we know treats their workers and our environment well, we can change the industry.
That’s why we built The First Star, thanks for joining in.