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‘Some Of The Most Devastated Workers’: New California Bill Seeks To Get Laid-Off Hospitality Employees Back To Work

Publication: KCBS/KCAL - Los Angeles

Hotels in the Southland and across the state were among the hardest hit during the economic downturn caused by the pandemic.

Now, state legislators say they are trying to help the throngs of laid-off workers in the hospitality industry by passing a new law that says larger hotels and resorts have to rehire their former staff first before hiring new employees.

“What we really want to do is make sure that as hotels are opening back up, that these workers who have been on unemployment, unable to work for almost a year now, have the first right of refusal to return to work if they were laid off during the pandemic,” San Francisco Assemblyman Phil Ting, who authored the bill, said.

Ting says legislators are only targeting larger organizations, such as hotel chains.

“This only affects large hotels,” he said. “So the mom and pop hotels, if you have a 10-room inn or a bed and breakfast or something that’s only a few rooms, you are not impacted. This is really geared toward the larger hotel chains.”

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