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The dark side of the hotel industry: higher than average workplace injuries

Despite the struggling economy, hotels across New York are still doing business with everyone from business travelers to families looking to get away from it all. A busy hotel means work for hotel staff, as everyone from restaurant servers to front desk clerks to room service attendants keep busy ensuring that each hotel guest’s needs are met.

The dark side of the hotel business is the hard work required of the individuals on the bottom of the wage ladder, the people who keep the hotel clean and operational. The effects of the hospitality industry on the health and well-being of hotel workers is being studied with great interest by researchers across the country, with some shocking results.

A report that will be published this coming January reveals an unfortunate fact for some members of the New York hospitality workforce: if you are a woman, you are more than 50 percent as likely to be injured on the job, and if you are a Hispanic woman, your injury rate is two-thirds higher than the rate for white female hotel workers.

How can this disparity be explained? Why are more women being injured than men in the hospitality industry, and why are Hispanic women unfairly prone to injury? According to the study’s authors, women are more likely to work in housekeeping than men, and this area is the most injury-prone job in a hotel.

Housekeeping is a surprisingly risky job for injuries. Housekeepers have to perform a number of grueling repetitive tasks every day, including everything from lifting heavy mattresses to repeatedly vacuuming rooms and scrubbing bathrooms. All of this very physical, demanding work can wear on housekeepers, some who have to clean over a dozen rooms in quick succession.

Overall, housekeepers have a 7.9 percent annual injury rate, which is twice the injury rate for the average worker in the United States. The housekeeper injury rate is also fifty percent higher than that of all hotel workers.

According to the study, housekeeping injury rates per year break down like this:

  • Hispanic housekeepers: 10.6 percent
  • Asian housekeepers: 7.3 percent
  • White housekeepers: 6.3 percent
  • Black housekeepers: 5.5 percent

Men are not immune from injury, either. The study found that Hispanic and Asian men were 1.5 times more likely to be injured in a hotel job than white men. This disparity is likely due to the nature of the work performed by many Asian and Hispanic men, who tend to hold physically challenging and repetitive jobs as dishwashers, banquet waiters and cooks.

Why women are so adversely affected is a big question, and why Hispanic and Asian men and women suffer more while working hotel jobs is also a question that needs to be answered.

Help for injured workers

If you know a New York worker who has been injured while at work, please know that there is help. The attorneys at Markhoff & Mittman have a long history of helping the families of injured workers, and they can assist you, too. Please contact their office today for a chance to talk about your case for no cost and no obligation .

Markhoff & Mittman, P.C.

14 Mamaroneck Avenue

Suite 400

White Plains, NY 10601

Toll Free: (866) 205-2415

Phone: (914) 946-1452

Fax: (914) 946-0810


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