Worker Safety at the Push of a Button

not quite on the environment beat. Our colleague Fatima Husaying covers occupational safety, and she just did a really fascinating story about a bill out in California that would require all hotels to give their workers panic buttons. The workers could press these buttons if they're feeling threatened by a guest and help would come immediately. The bill would also require hotels to maintain so called blacklists of guests who've threatened their workers in the past and deny service to

anyone on these lists. We wanted these talk to Fatima about the rationale behind this bill and about its chances of moving forward in the California legislature. But first I asked her, how do these panic buttons work? So the panic buttons themselves are tiny electronics that are worn on the body, whether through a wristband or on a lanyard. It's silent, so you wouldn't hear the noise of an individual who is afraid of a guest in a room.

You press the button and immediately somebody from management is summoned to the room and they can be there in a matter of minutes. An individual who runs one of these companies, the company was Pinpoint. They told me that the cost of these buttons for an entire hotel would roughly be around two hundred thousand dollars per hotel. So that's important to note because that's where we get that conflict in between the safety of workers and individuals who

run hotels and the business groups. But we're not just talking about that's one aspect of the legislation. But the other aspect is that if a hotel worker I guess hits their panic button, the hotels also have to maintain a blacklist that would put that guest on the list and the guests could never stay there again. Right, And there are a lot of conversations about blacklists and hotels. They do exist already. If you are extremely belligerent and

go to your local hotel. They likely have some type of list to remind themselves that you're not allowed to be there. But it sounds like this is different and that this would be the state requiring hotels to maintain this list, right, And that's where the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Hotel and Lodging Association say that there are constitutional issues there in terms of the government

keeping lists like this. Well, we'll get into the arguments against this legislation in a little bit, but I actually I'm interested in finding out more about why hotel workers need this. I mean, I can take a few guesses, but why are they saying that this legislation is necessary.

That's a really good question. Being a hotel worker, you face a lot of harassment and discrimination on the basis of working alone in very personal quarters of individuals who are kind of transient moving from one city to another. A study was done by unite here, which is a major labor union in the United States and Canada, that said that at least fifty eight percent of all housekeepers

face sexual assault. Another thing that is also should be noted is that a lot of hotel housekeepers are undocumented, so the likelihood of their bringing a claim or a complaint against a guest would be not as likely compared to documented individuals. Is this legislation and this movement to implement the legislation maybe in other cities or other states. Is this springing from all the recent attention that's been paid to sexual assault as a result of the Me

too movement? Or does this predate that and it's just a coincidence that everyone is now talking about this. So the Me Too movement has certainly increased the visibility of this movement in general of adding panic buttons into hotels or giving them to hotel workers. However, unite here brought this to the public's attention after that infamous incident with Dominique Strauss KHN, the French diplomat who allegedly raped a

hotel housekeeper in twenty eleven. Since then, unite here has been pretty active in either lobbying companies and getting collective bargaining agreements with a lot of the housekeepers who are unionized, and in doing so have also lended their efforts to bringing in legislation for cities. This bill has been moving through the California legislature, with committees taking action as recently

as last week, but not everyone's on board. In a minute, we'll get to the arguments against it, But first I wanted to remind you that we have a hashtag, and that hashtag is parts per B. Don't forget to use that hashtag on social media to chat with us and ask us all the questions you've been dying to hear us answer or maybe just artfully obeyed. So once again, that hashtag is parts per B. Use it all right, we're back. We're talking with Bloomberg Occupational safety reporter Fatima Hussein.

Fatima says hotels and other business groups aren't thrilled about the bill in California that would require hotels to give all of their workers panic buttons. Aside from the argument they make that sexual harassment and assault happens in every industry, the hotel industry is no different. They make the due process claim about the blacklist, stating that people wouldn't want to stay in California hotels anymore. And on top of that,

the extreme cost to hotels. Not only would they have to outfit each housekeeper with a panic button, but they'd also have to develop a system for management to be able to run to the help of a housekeeper in trouble. So it's not necessarily just the cost of the button itself,

but also the creating the traditional security. Yeah, exactly. Although it's simp It's funny you mentioned that, you know, one of their arguments is that this is you know, all workers in many different industries are threatened, and you know, bisexual harassment or sexual assault. That seems like an argument for expanding this to other sectors. I mean, I think you mentioned in your story that hotel workers are not the only ones who have talked about potentially using panic buttons.

Can you talk a little bit about some of the other industries that where workers are saying we need more protection. Sure? So, I spoke with an individual who works at a bar in a hotel and she told me anonymously that she faces harassment constantly in her job and knows of many people who face harassment in their jobs. And we know from statistics and the increased visibility of harassment studies in the workplace that it happens often, so bartenders are very

interested in this. I could think of a host of other jobs where having a panic button would be helpful to at least deter harassment, but right now, because of the extreme rates of harassment according to unite here study in several other studies, it's really housekeepers that are the focal point here. So we have legislation in some cities, or laws that have passed in some cities. California maybe the first state to pass a state wide law. That

bill is currently going through the legislature. Let's talk about where it's at and the next steps. The Labor Union is supporting it, The Chamber of Commerce is not. What is what's going on, the likelihood of it passing, We're unsure at this point. However, it has gone through the Assemblies Labor and Employment Committee as of May second, it passed through that committee. Then it will go through the Assembly's Judiciary Committee on May eighth, where if it does

go through, it will then face a Assembly vote. In California does tend to be out in front of it on a lot of these issues. People call it sort of the laboratory of democracy that you once laws passed there, they tend to spread to other states. I would actually be interested in finding out if there are other states that maybe could take up this law as well, especially Nevada, where the hospitality industry is far and away the biggest

industry in the state. Yes, so Las Vegas is considering adding panic button legislation for workers through collective bargaining agreements. So we see when cities take on this type of topic or this issue, it's usually through the collective bargaining process and then they face pressure to pass legislation. That's what we're seeing in Las Vegas right now. We've seen it in Long Beach in Miami Beach is also facing a similar issue. Get this from sort of a fifty

thousand foot level. Do you think that with this new technology, this is going to be a new way to enforce occupational safety standards? You know, we now have the ability to have a button that you can press that can immediately call for help him. Fifty years ago that wasn't necessarily the case. Is this another example of, you know, using technology to change the way that we deal with

these these sort of occupational safety issues. Yes. Absolutely. Bruce Wolfson actually wrote a story recently about how construction work. We should say, sort of veteran intrepid reporter, Bruce Rolfson, who is here at Bloomberg, you should all check out

his work. He's amazing. He's an amazing reporter. He recently wrote a story about how construction workers and workers in outdoor industries and other kinds of industries use apps and other forms of technology to monitor occupational safety in one way or another. And so, of course we're seeing technology used in this way to assist housekeepers in reporting. I think we'll see it in other fields in other ways.

I know that there is a concern from some workers who feel that this type of technology could be used to monitor them. So if there's a quota on how many beds they're supposed to be working on in a day, or if they want to leave the premises for a little bit while their employer watch them while they're doing that. I think in every industry, in one way or another, we're seeing concerns about how much employers are able to monitor workers. And this might be or it might lend

itself to that conversation in the future. That was Bloomberg's Fatima Hussein talking about workers safety in the hotel industry. For more of a reporting, visit our website at Newstop Bloomberg Environment dot com slash safety. This episode of Parts per Billion produced by myself with help from Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. Parts. Pavillion's editor is Marissa Horne. Our audio engineer is Nico and Zelada. The music tracks for this episode of PARSP Rebellion are A Message and Breaking

Bad by Jazzar. They were used under a Creative Commons Attribution Share a Like license. More information can be found at betterwith music dot com