With up to 17 rooms to clean each shift, Fatima Amahmoud’s job at the Moxy hotel in downtown Boston sometimes feels impossible.

There was the time she found three days worth of blond dog fur clinging to the curtains, the bedspread and the carpet. She knew she wouldn’t finish in the 30 minutes she is supposed to spend on each room. The dog owner had declined daily room cleaning, an option that many hotels have encouraged as environmentally friendly but is a way for them to cut labor costs and cope with worker shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unionized housekeepers, however, have waged a fierce fight to restore automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, saying they have been saddled with unmanageable workloads, or in many cases, fewer hours and a decline in income.

The dispute has become emblematic of the frustration over working conditions among hotel workers, who were put out of their jobs for months during pandemic shutdowns and returned to an industry grappling with chronic staffing shortages and evolving travel trends.

  • magnetosphere@fedia.io
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    4 months ago

    Hotel housekeepers work their asses off. It is a HARD job. I wish them all the luck in the world in their unionizing efforts!

    • MrQuallzin@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      They already do when you leave a mess or destroy property. That’s not unusual and acts as a deterrent

      • Sc00ter@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        I think they mean for the standard daily cleaning we used to get included. God forbid they dip into record profits. They’ll pass the extra labor cost onto the consumer

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I just paid a $250 cleaning fee at a hotel this past week. It was a dog friendly room and I had 2 dogs and stayed for 5 nights. The problem is that I paid a non-refundable $200 pet fee and a $250 cleaning fee, on top of being required to strip the beds and take the trash out to the dumpster myself on top of it.

      I could have spent an hour removing dog hair from couches and sweeping it all up but with $450 in cleaning fees alone it’s difficult as a consumer to reconcile doing extra work. Problem is, who does that $450 go to? Somehow I feel like the housekeepers don’t see much of it.

  • mctoasterson@reddthat.com
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    4 months ago

    The “no daily room cleaning” thing is and always has been bullshit. They used COVID as an excuse for it. It was a way to cut cost and provide less value to the customer.

    • NOPper@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I usually hang the do not disturb sign most of the week just because I don’t like having random people around my shit. But after reading this I’m reconsidering how I work hotel stays.

      • mctoasterson@reddthat.com
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        4 months ago

        If that’s your preference that’s fine. The ridiculous part was them stopping it as a default. It resulted in scenarios like people paying $800 per night to stay in a Disney hotel and having an undersized room that doesn’t even get cleaned during the week they are there.

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      4 months ago

      I’ve been watching everything get cut in the quest for endless growth all my life. When I was a kid, my mom went to the bank and they had a bunch of tellers. Now, at the branch I use, they have a dozen spots at the counter and never more than two tellers. Everything keeps getting shittier as capitalism consumes itself.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Good luck to them. It’s a thankless job. We tip the front of house when all they do is hand you your take-out, but not the workers that clean the skid marks you left in the toilet, or the hair dye in the tub, or the beer someone spilled in the carpet. They’re the ones that should be getting tipped.

    They’re understaffed for the same reasons as any in the service industry - shitty work and especially low pay.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      You can and absolutely should leave a tip for the cleaners whenever it’s getting done. Just leave a note that says, “thank you, here’s a tip.” With the cash next to it.

  • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I’m pretty pro worker, but this sounds like forcing daily cleaning on customers who don’t want it. That just seems the wrong way to go. Increased time to do their jobs, minimum pay no matter the hours needed, and better hourly rates is where I would have gone.

    • Itsamelemmy@lemmy.zip
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      4 months ago

      I agree. I don’t want strangers in my room. Ever. The do not disturb goes on as soon as I enter and doesn’t come off. That being said, I’m usually like 3 nights max and try to leave the room in good shape.

    • kungen
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      4 months ago

      Yeah, I usually ask for no cleaning because I thought it’d save them time and effort…? It’s not like I make the room that much dirtier with an extra day. Instead they have to spend time making my bed and stuff for no reason. Or have I been doing it wrong this entire time?

        • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Which point? It doesn’t seem like that is what the union is pushing for. I mean sure, they probably aren’t asking the hotel to forcibly clean customers rooms, but even doing it by default seems like the wrong direction. It should be on request. And the employees pay shouldn’t depend on the customers whims. It should be stable pay that they are asking for with the possibility of overtime.

          • Naura@startrek.website
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            4 months ago

            This had nothing to do with what the union wants, the previous poster was asking if they have been doing it wrong

            It’s their choice so there is no right or wrong

  • quicklime@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    There are hotels that allow dogs in the rooms? I don’t see how that could work in the long run without requiring deposits that most people wouldn’t want to pay.

    • IamAnonymous@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      There is always pet fee for about $100 and I thought it’s for the extra cleaning. If the customer declined daily house keeping and kept the dog for a week in the room then they should be charged accordingly and not make the housekeepers clean it in the same amount of time as the other rooms.

    • Drusas@fedia.io
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      4 months ago

      People wanting or needing to travel with their dog just pay the extra fees and deposits.

    • Encrypt-Keeper@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Rooms without carpeting, and non-refundable pet fees. Vinyl flooring makes cleaning up after pets trivial. The only issue you have is soiling of upholstery and potential chewing. But if everyone pays a $100 per dog fee, only a subset of those dog owners will cause any issues so the good dogs subsidize the cost for the bad dogs.

      The fee and deposits sound steep, until you compare them with the astronomical costs of dog boarding.

      • arglebargle@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        I have yet to see a pet friendly hotel with vinyl floors. It’s always been wall to wall carpeting.

        Personally I am all in favor of hard floors dogs or not. I stayed In hotel recently that mops the floors after every stay and that seems preferable to carpet and a vacuum.

        But oddly enough, it was not pet friendly. The last two i stayed in with carpet were though.

    • quicklime@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      The replies make sense, and I should have realized. I guess I was thinking any deposit large enough to cover all the possibilities would be more than anyone would agree to, but I can see how it’s to both owner and guest’s advantage to make it work.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    That sounds exactly like an MBA thought. If rooms don’t get cleaned daily I don’t need as many housekeepers. Ignore the fact that they take longer to clean when it is time and that in 6 months rooms will be rolling over for cleaning at around the same rate as before, requiring more housekeepers, not less. MBA got a bonus for saving the business money though…

  • StrandedInTimeFall@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    Personally, no mandatory daily cleanings. But, just like if you smoke, if you basically trash the room, then you should be required to pay higher fees when it takes longer than the minimum to clean up a room. Lots of dog hair, human fluids everywhere, major spills, garbage everywhere, etc. That way you have to pay the overtime for all the time it takes to clean up a trashed room. Take a video of your room before you check out, and if they say it took longer, then dispute it with the video.