Operators of the biggest hotels in New York City have agreed to a long-term contract that will give hotel housekeepers and other employees significant pay raises, fully paid health coverage, larger pension contributions and one unusual benefit: personal panic buttons.
The security devices would summon help if hotel staff encounter danger in a guest’s room — a possibility that was brought into sharp relief when a hotel housekeeper accused the French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her in his suite at the Sofitel New York last year.
The provision in the proposed contract calls for the hotels to equip certain employees with “devices to be carried on their persons at work that they can quickly and easily activate to effectively summon prompt assistance to their location.”
The devices, which will be distributed within a year to housekeepers, room-service waiters and even the attendants who stock the minibars, may vary from hotel to hotel for technical reasons, but all will serve the basic purpose of calling for help. No estimate of the cost of the equipment was available on Tuesday.
“It’s a very cost-efficient and simple way to keep hotel workers safe,” said Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman, a Queens Democrat who sponsored a bill last year to require hotels to provide such equipment. “After what happened last year and what we learned happens all too often in hotels, we’re very grateful that the hotels have agreed to essentially adopt the premise of our legislation.”
Neither union officials nor representatives of the hotel owners would say that the provision was a result of the Strauss-Kahn episode, which ended with charges against him being dropped in August after prosecutors decided that the accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, was not credible.
29 percent pay hike
Nonetheless, after the arrest of Mr. Strauss-Kahn last spring, the Sofitel and another Manhattan hotel, the Pierre, said that they would provide some sort of panic buttons to their staff members. A spokeswoman for the Pierre, Nora Walsh, said on Tuesday that the hotel was “implementing the communication system,” but declined to share any details.
The panic buttons may prove to be the least costly of the provisions in the new contract, whose terms were presented on Tuesday evening to the 30,000 members of the New York Hotel Trades Council A.F.L.-C.I.O. The seven-year contract has been approved by the board of the Hotel Association of New York and is scheduled to be ratified by the union’s members on Monday.
The deal would include annual raises that would increase wages by 29 percent over the life of the contract. Those increases would raise the pay of a typical housekeeper to $59,823 per year, from $46,337 today, said John Turchiano, a hotel union spokesman.
The proposal would also guarantee that the members continue to receive medical, dental and optical insurance for themselves and their families with no out-of-pocket costs to them, not even co-payments to doctors, Mr. Turchiano said. In addition, the hotel owners would gradually increase their contributions to the members’ pensions to 10.5 percent of total payroll, from 9 percent.
Asked what concessions the union made in return, Peter Ward, president of the council, said, “We didn’t give up anything.”
Hotels 'not flush'
Mr. Ward acknowledged that in an economy so weak that once-mighty unions were accepting wage cuts and pensions freezes, the hotel union’s deal might seem extraordinary.
But pointing to the rising rates the hotels have been charging and their high occupancy levels, Mr. Ward said, “you have to recognize that the hotel industry is in a unique bubble in New York City.”
“This is unlike the hotel industry in any other city in America,” he continued.
But a spokeswoman for the hotel association, Lisa Linden, responded that “the hotel industry in New York City is not flush; it faces continued challenges and uncertainties.”
“The industry values its workers greatly and their safety is also of paramount concern,” she continued.
Joseph E. Spinnato, the president of the association, said the hotel owners were pleased to wrap up contract negotiations amicably five months before the current contract was set to expire. “In a constructive and cooperative spirit, we were able to reach this early agreement, which is good for our members, the union and the city of New York,” Mr. Spinnato said.
The contract covers employees at most of the big hotels in the city, but not those operated under the Hilton brand by Blackstone Group, including the New York Hilton and the Waldorf-Astoria. A separate contract will have to be negotiated for those workers, who number from 3,000 to 4,000, Mr. Ward said.
This article, headlined "For New York Hotel Staff, Panic Buttons and Big Raises," first appeared in The New York Times.