Hotel-Hotel 'bed war' escalates

By CBCUnlocked
Room attendants at Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York Hotel took their 15-minute breaks en masse Thursday, hoping to make a point about escalating workloads in an industry increasingly reliant on heavy luxury bedding to lure customers.


Calling it a "bed war," union organizer Andrea Calver says hotel rooms across North America have bigger mattresses, heavier duvets and more pillows than ever before.


But the people whose job it is to attend to these rooms – mostly women recently arrived in Canada – are finding the work increasingly difficult.


Some of these luxury mattresses can weigh as much as 51 kilograms and bedding can weigh 17 kilograms, Calver says. And that’s beginning to take a toll on room attendants. At the Royal York, 23 of the 150 attendants are on modified duties as a result of injuries sustained while making up rooms.


"Mostly repetitive strain – pain in their wrists and backs," says Calver, an organizer with UNITE HERE, Local 75. The union represents Royal York attendants, who are currently in contract negotiations. It also represents employees at about three-quarters of Toronto’s hotels, or about 6,000 workers.


At the Royal York, attendants are expected to make up 16 rooms a day. They are entitled to two paid 15 minute breaks and an unpaid 30 minute lunch.



But Calver says most find it impossible to make their 16-room target without forgoing their breaks. While they are allowed under their collective agreement to "return" rooms, Calver says they feel pressure not to do so.


"It comes from hotel managers. Their expectation is that room attendants will do 16 rooms. And there are restrictions on their ability to give back rooms," Calver says.


Before they can give back a room, attendants must call a supervisor to inspect their work, and they must call before a designated time.


"Hotels have set up onerous procedures to give back rooms. It would take a lot of guts on a continual basis to keep giving rooms back," Calver says.


But Tammy Phillips, Royal York’s director of public relations, says the procedures for giving back rooms is only meant to ensure they’re properly cleaned before guests check-in.


"It’s to meet guest expectations and not to intimidate anybody into not taking their break. . . We have always encouraged them to take their breaks. On Tuesday, we actually started scheduling to make sure they take their breaks," Phillips says.


She says the hotel introduced fitted sheets so that attendants need only tuck and not lift mattresses to make the beds. Phillips says attendants are no longer expected to flip mattresses, but merely to rotate them using the handles.


She also says the hotel brought in an ergonomics expert to demonstrate how to make up a room with minimal effort and has been training staff to use the new techniques since February.


But Avenelle Johnson, who has worked as room attendant at the Royal York for 23 years, says the new fitted sheets require tugging before they’ll cover the mattress.


"They’re tight on the bed so they’re still hard. And sometimes when they run short of fitted sheets, you still have to lift the mattress," Johnson says.


And she says room attendants are often injured by the new automated carts the hotel recently introduced so that attendants wouldn’t have to pull carts but merely push a button and guide them.

"The carts can only hold X amount of linen, so it's tightly packed. You have to pull hard to take it out. It hurts your shoulder and back," Johnson says.