§ 5.49.010. Purpose.

The purpose of this initiative is to protect the safety and improve working conditions of hotel employees in the City.

Hotel employees who work by themselves are vulnerable to crimes and other threatening behavior, including sexual assault. This Chapter enables hotel workers to protect their safety by, among other measures, requiring that hotel employers provide workers who clean guest rooms with panic buttons which they may use to report threatening conduct by a hotel guest and other emergencies. Many instances of sexual assault go unreported to the police. This Chapter also includes provisions that support hotel employees' ability to report criminal and threatening guest behavior to the proper authorities.

Hotel employees who clean guest rooms are also frequently assigned overly burdensome room cleaning quotas and unexpected overtime, which undermines the public interest in ensuring that hotel room cleaners can perform their work in a manner that adequately protects public health and interferes with their ability to meet family and personal obligations. This Chapter includes provisions to assure that workers receive fair compensation when their workload assignments exceed proscribed limits and to prohibit hotel employers from assigning employees overtime work when their shifts exceed 10 hours in a day, except in emergency situations, without obtaining workers' informed consent.

( Measure WW § 1, 2018)