Miami hasn’t been hospitable to its hospitality workers. Now they’re saying ‘enough’ | Editorial

“Signing bonus of $150 for new hires payable after 90 days,” read the Biltmore Hotel’s ad posted on LinkedIn looking to fill dozens of positions, from table bussers to bellmen and housekeepers at the luxury Coral Gables resort.

Employers in the hospitality, restaurant and service industries are desperate for workers and they are throwing perks at them if they can.

“In my close to 40 years in the industry, I’ve never seen line employees being offered incentives, signing bonuses, retention bonuses,” Scott Berman, a hospitality expert at PricewaterhouseCoopers, told the Herald Editorial Board.

Now that businesses and customers have begun returning to pre-pandemic levels, hospitality workers have become a hot commodity as part of a nationwide labor shortage. But historically they have been invisible, cleaning our hotel rooms, busing our tables and carrying our luggage while surviving on low wages and often performing grueling tasks in one of the country’s most expensive metro areas.

It’s not by accident that many don’t want to return to the industry after being laid off or finding other jobs that are more flexible, less taxing and may pay more. For an economy as reliant on hospitality as Miami, we have not been as hospitable to the workers behind it — many of whom are immigrants with limited options.

The pandemic forced many people to look at their lives from a new perspective, with some workers saying they’ve had enough of the way things were.

“I believe this is a turning point for workers,” Daniella Pierre, president of the Miami-Dade branch of the NAACP, told the Editorial Board. “Workers are tired of feeling underappreciated.”

Let’s hope the trend Berman described continues and that the pandemic is indeed a turning point.

Who’s to blame

Some politicians blame the labor shortage on the extra $300 per week in unemployment benefits workers had been getting from the federal government. That ran out starting on June 27 after Gov. Ron DeSantis cut the additional help.

Perhaps that change will help alleviate some of the problem. The Florida Chamber of Commerce says there are 512,900 available jobs but only 487,000 people looking for work, the Orlando Sentinel reported. But in states, such Mississippi, Indiana and Alaska, that ended federal benefits earlier this month, job search activity is still below the national average, according to an analysis by Indeed.

For Florida, the answer will become obvious as we monitor whether the labor market rebounds in the coming weeks. Berman warned things won’t change overnight and could take a couple of months.

Some reasons workers might not come back to work immediately could include schedules that make it hard to have a work-family balance, lack of childcare and the fear of catching the coronavirus by dealing with the public.

Florida caps unemployment benefits at $275 a week, the equivalent of about $6.87 per hour, with a 40-hour work week, and among the lowest in the country. Lawmakers refused to increase those benefits this legislative session, even by a meager $100 per week that Democrats and some Republicans supported. Part-time and gig workers, as well as the self-employed, usually don’t qualify for state unemployment and had to rely on the federal money.

It’s also telling that some people can make more on unemployment than they did working full time. Pierre said she’s heard from people who never thought they would make more money from a government check than they did working up to 72 hours a week.

“There’s not a shortage of workers in the industry,” Pierre said. “There’s a shortage of standards of pay.”

‘Breaking point’ for employers

Employers seem to have taken notice of the need to raise their standards, with many seeing the situation as a wake-up call. The average hourly pay for leisure and hospitality employees nationwide increased from $17.24 in January to $18.09 in May, as the Miami Herald’s Taylor Dolven reported.

While the hope is that this wake-up call results in better wages and benefits in the long term, small and mid-size employers “have a breaking point” in terms of how much they can offer, Miami chef Michelle Bernstein told the Editorial Board.

Bernstein is in the process of opening new businesses and said she needs to hire anywhere from 20 to 80 workers. She’s “terrified” by the lack of labor.

We don’t want small businesses to suffer inordinately from this labor shortage. But we also don’t want Miami to return to its pre-pandemic normal for workers. We hope employers and workers can find a middle ground, and that hospitality workers in Miami finally get their due.

This story was originally published July 6, 2021 at 11:43 AM.