One o f our objectives in the information gathering was to find out what was the wage structure in the hotel. We elaborated a list where differences appeared between cleaners according to the agency employing them. The cleaners earned £5.75 a hour and the room attendants slightly more, the worst payment was for the so called ‘backyard boys’ so in a way the worst job is the least paid and then upward along the hierarchy...’ (Jim, male, white other, Italy, 6 years in London, part-time union organiser, hotel organising team)
According to the organiser o f one o f the hotels in East London targeted by the union campaign, the wage structure in London hotels appears to be mainly organised according to the specific nature of the assignment: the lower the ‘status’ o f the job, the lower the pay. Wage levels also vary according to the particular position filled by the worker even within the same department, (e.g. housekeepers earning more than chambermaids), their employment status (in-house, agency and so called ‘casual’ workers) and to the particular job agency through which workers are recruited (often paid the minimum wage, if not less). As the respondent emphasises, the complex labour process involved in hotels follows a precise job hierarchy. Some may be considered ‘dirtier’ than room cleaning (and crucially, also gendered, as in the case o f the ‘backyard boys' in charge of throwing the waste away) and therefore can be more invisible and worse-paid than those performed by hotel maids. Waiting staff and luggage porters may be paid even less. Nevertheless, they can top up their earnings with tips more easily than maids (Dutton et al. 2008: 102).
The cleaning jobs performed by chambermaids and housekeepers are usually the most devalued jobs, highly gendered, racialised and historically considered ‘low status jobs’ (Seifert and Messing 2006). The lack of respect shown to maids and cleaners is often based on the cultural associations between them and the dirt they must remove (Glenn 1992). Cleaning work presents a peculiar aspect of inferiorisation that is linked to its fem inisation: the fact that it is considered ‘women’s work’ reinforces the assumption that it does not require any particular skill but just those
that are performed on an everyday basis in the house (Adkins 1995, Bolton 2005)47. However, these workers, while being those who earn the lowest wage and perform the hardest physical work, also constitute the large majority o f the whole hotel’s workforce (Dutton et al. 2008).
Recent research into low-paid service jobs in London performed by migrants (namely contract cleaning, hospitality work, home care and the food processing industry) found that pay levels in those sectors are extremely low, with 90% of workers interviewed (in a sample of 341 individuals), earning less than the Greater London Authority's Living Wage for London (£6.70 an hour) (Evans et al. 2005: 4). Average earnings were just £5.45 an hour (the National Minimum Wage at the time o f the research), which corresponded with an average annual salary of £10,200 a year before tax and National Insurance (ibid. 4) (less than half the national average annual salary and less than one third o f average earnings in London!).
An original analysis of the ‘New Earning Survey’ (1993-2000) and the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (2001-05) conducted by Wills et al. (2009) reveals that hospitality workers and catering assistants in particular received the lowest rate as their real wages. The real hourly earnings in occupations such as catering assistants lost £1. 66 per hour between 2001 and 2005, and also fell as compared to the rest o f working Londoners who gained an average o f £0.71 an hour in real earnings in the same period (Wills et al 2009a: 36). Furthermore, while employees in London gained on average £2.88 more per hour than workers outside the capital, the differential in earnings for catering assistants between London and the rest o f the UK had fallen to just 0.54% by 2001 (ibid.) Overall these numbers attest to the trend o f income polarisation in London with those at the bottom end and in elementary occupations experiencing a decline in wages with those at the top growing faster (HM Treasury 2006, cit. in Wills et al. 2009: 33)
47 Indeed, these assumptions problematically imply the historical de-valorisation o f domestic and reproductive labour. The social construction o f ‘cleaning’ and its lack o f recognition as ‘proper work’ is in fact instrumental to keeping these jobs also financially and socially less rewarded (Glenn 1992). More broadly, Federici (2004) in her important historical reconstruction o f capitalist accumulation argued that the degradation o f wom en’s work and their social position, and not only the division and specialisation o f labour were key to the capitalist division o f labour. Federici showed more specifically how the subjugation o f women’s bodies and the destruction o f their power through the ‘witch hunt’ in the 15th and 16th century in Europe and America were central to the process o f ‘primitive accumulation’,
Hotel workers studied in the present research, whose earnings were often around, if not below, the National Minimum Wage, appeared to be in favour of the demand for a London Living Wage advanced during the hotel workers campaign48. Wages across the sector also appeared to be highly stratified according to contractual status and occupational roles. However, issues of pay increases were perceived as less urgent by in-house and relatively long-term employees than other workers, despite their general awareness o f the gap between the staff wage levels and the huge profits of big hotel companies employing them49:
I really agree with the campaign for the Living Wage: I don’t see hotels closing down! They are a rich industry... they’ll always make money. Why should people do such a hard work (because we work hard!) and we are pa id peanuts. For example housekeeping... what is the hotel all about? About rooms! They should treat us with respect (Arianna, female, white other, Portugal-Angola, 28 years in London, in-house, housekeeper)
While low wages are a characteristic problem in the industry, further squeezes in wages, work intensification and work insecurity are being pursued through new employment practices that have been associated with the introduction o f subcontracted labour (Evans et al 2007). It is no coincidence that research has found the lowest pay in a luxury hotel in West London where agency Polish workers were working a piece rate o f £1.70 per room, while the wages paid to in-house staff in similar hotels ranged from £4.85 to £5.20 per hour (Evans et al. 2005: 24). One o f the main reasons why this group of workers experiences the lowest rates o f pay lies in the form of piece work, through which money is in fact taken from the workers.
Wage deductions and unpaid labour
During the period o f participant observation, both agency and ‘casual’ workers (directly employed by the hotel but on a casual basis), reported regular cases o f non-paid overtime work.
48 For the year 2009 and up to April 2010 the LLW is £7.60 per hour. Since 2003 it has been worth between £1.65 and £1.90 more per hour than the National Minimum Wage (see www.hotelworkers.org.ukT
49 According to the British Hospitality Association the hotel industry’s annual turnover was as high as £27 billion in 2006 (cit. in Dutton et al. 2008 : 96)
Taking the form o f unpaid labour misappropriated by the employers, it represented one of the most odious forms of exploitation for the migrant workers met during the union campaign and in the job agencies. For one casual worker, employed directly but on a casual basis by a four star hotel, there was simply no alternative but to finish the amount o f work assigned in the Food and Beverage department, even when this implied longer working hours:
... there are times when I am forced to stay until late in the evening... I mean I am not forced but in practice, even if it means to stay two or four hours over time... it is better to stay if you want to keep the jo b (Ethnographic diary, informal interview with Fabio, white other, Brazil, casual worker, Food and Beverage)
Paid or unpaid extra workload appears easier to impose on workers employed through a third party agency, precisely due to their more insecure status and under the condition of easier dismissal. Another common way o f deducting part o f the hotel workers’ wages through overtime work reported by the TUC (2007) is by composing the wage on the basis o f ‘payment per room’ on an unrealistic schedule. In this way extra hours o f work become the only available option to complete the assigned number of rooms. A maid from a luxury hotel in West London explained:
If you do not finish the number o f rooms that you have been assigned you have to stay overtime without being paid. While, if you finish before anyway you have to stay until the end. And then there is always an ‘extra room’ to clean... (Cecilia, female, white other, Brazil, 9 months in London, casual, chambermaid)
An extreme case was recorded by the TUC, reporting a 7 hour 15 minute shift during which cleaners were supposed to complete 15 rooms (TUC 2007: 2 1).50 I f thirty minutes to clean a room may not appear a short time at first glance, it is necessary to understand how much pressure is indeed put on the room attendant considering the amount o f tasks and hard work that she is supposed to carry out. Within those strict margins she has to clean and make up the room: vacuum and dust, clean bathrooms, make beds, change linen and pillows, and replenish soaps and other
50 In the case o f a French hotel, the ‘unachievable goals’ for a daily workload can reach extreme levels, with the rate o f 2-4 rooms per hour depending on the hotel category (up to 18 rooms a day and occasionally even 24 a day!) (Guegnard and Meriot 2009 :106)
amenities (Priscilla, female, black, Nigeria, 17 years in London, in-house, housekeeper). The workload increases whenever ‘deep cleaning’ is required and shower curtains and carpets must be cleaned or replaced and areas around guest rooms such as corridors must also be maintained (Vanselow et al. 2009: 8). The increase in the number o f amenities, a result of what some authors have called the ‘dual competitive strategy evident across the industry of raising service quality while also cutting costs’ often implies that the actual workload for room attendants augments as each o f these features and complimentary items require further attention and maintenance (ibid.).
A further form o f wage deduction can be encountered in relation to cases o f unfair dismissal under threat of deportation, whereby the wage is not paid before the workers are handed over to immigration authorities on the basis o f their irregular migration status (TUC 2007: 23). Various anecdotes of immigration raids (or the mere threat o f them by employers) emerged from interviews with the members o f the union branch and other migrant workers in the sector. Migrant workers are aware o f the fragility o f their colleagues with uncertain juridical status, the ways in which they are mistreated and how employers make use o f it:
This problem o f ‘the illegals’ is very com plex...I mean, besides us who are legal and we have already problems at w ork...can you imagine, those who are illegal are a step down. They are treated very badly, they have just to shut up\ I have witnessed that with my eyes: a little woman, a small woman from Ecuador...they treat her like a dog\ She is so scared, goes to the toilet and cries and then she comes back to w ork... There is fear, loads o f fe a r...(Corrado, male, non white other, Brazil, recently arrived, casual, room steward)
The research by Wills and colleagues suggests that precisely those migrants without legal status to work are preferred by employers, willing to adapt the demands o f an increasingly ‘flexible’ labour market to an equally ‘flexible’ demand (Wills et al. 2009a: 58). The same research argues that, although this undocumented immigration was not policy-driven, it happened quietly ‘under the radar of the Government’. As the Government makes control and surveillance o f so-called ‘illegal labour supply’ stricter with changes in the migration regime, the ‘undocumented’ or those without the right papers to work are pushed further down into the informal economy and are more likely to carry out even more marginal and exploitative employment (MRN 2008).