New Orleans visitors spent nearly $9 billion in the city in 2017.
But so few of those dollars support the vast service industry and cultural economy that draws those dollars and takes care of the more than 18 million visitors who spend them, illustrating a deep divide between hospitality workers and the cityโs crucial economic engine.
On a chilly evening just before Thanksgiving, about a dozen New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee (NOHWC) members were gathered around a l…
Workers and culture groups and New Orleansโ service industry union are asking city officials to work towards a โsustainable tourismโ model for the cityโs largest economic driver, one that ensures better wages, health care, fair scheduling and workplace protections from sexual harassment and wage theft.
Gabriel Bolden, chapter vice president for UNITE HERE Local 23 and an employee of the unionized Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, said sheโs fortunate to have a union job with fair wages and a comprehensive health care plan, โbut many people in the hospitality and restaurant industry do not have that privilege.โ
โOur people deserve the right to health care, respect and a fair living wage,โ she said.
A proposal also calls for an improved affordable public transit service that links workers to employment, including the cityโs hospitals and downtown restaurants and hotels.
Advocates also are asking for the cityโs support behind workforce training and local hiring programs and apprenticeships and for better overall representation at City Hall, with people from hospitality and cultural backgrounds sitting on often-influential boards and commissions, including the newly expanded Human Relations Advisory Commission and powerful entities like the Economic Development Advisory Commission, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Commission and the New Orleans Business Alliance.
Representatives from Step Up ถถา๕h, UNITE HERE, the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans (MaCCNO) and Loyola Universityโs Workplace Justice Center asked members of the New Orleans City Council Oct. 2 to consider how city officials can better leverage public dollars to support the thousands of workers they represent.
โPeople say when tourism succeeds, everyone succeeds,โ said Step Up Louisianโs Ben Zucker. โIn the New Orleans economy weโre finding that to be less and less true.โ
Organizing efforts among the city's service industry have had recent wins unionizing hotels and gaining traction inside City Hall, which pledged support for a health care program after organizers crashed a tourism board meeting earlier this year. But those gains still face a steep climb as the city struggles to support a massive tourism and hospitality workforce facing rising costs of living, stagnant wages, a lack of affordable housing, and what advocates say is an inadequate public transit footprint.
Orleans Parish has the largest inequitable divide in the state, according to Erika Zucker with Loyolaโs Workplace Justice Center, pointing to 1 percent of the city earning 29 percent more than the bottom 99 percent.
More than half of New Orleans residents are the so-called โworking poorโ as determined by the of people in ถถา๕h living below a โasset-limited, income-constrained and employed,โ or ALICE, threshold.
Jobs in tourism, hospitality, retail and culture account for more than half of all jobs paying $1,250 or less, according to Zucker. Roughly 15,000 people work as servers earning tipped wages, often starting at a base pay of $2.13 from their employer.
Those industries also increasingly mirror a โgig economy,โ often with inconsistent schedules and no safety nets or benefits, including sick leave.
In a surprise result earlier this month โ and against the opposition of the restaurant industry and many elected officials โ Washington, D.C. …
Those kinds of environments make them ripe for sexual harassment, according to pay equity advocate Julie Schwam Harris, who points to the over-representation of women in low-wage hospitality jobs and the disproportionate number of filings of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints by women.
Harris also argued that the often racist and sexist history of tipping in the U.S. continues to resonate in tipped-wage jobs, reinforcing the power imbalance between men and women in the workplace. โWe are shamed, blamed, more fearful of reprisal for speaking out on these things,โ Harris said.
Members of the City Councilโs Economic Development Committee were receptive to the coalitionโs pitch, though Zucker added that these kinds of policy and cultural changes are โnot possible without all the right people at the table.โ
โI do not feel like we can increase the tourism base without offsetting the negative impacts,โ said District C Councilmember Kristin Gisleson Palmer, adding that if benefits to the tourism industry arenโt taking into account its employeesโ quality of life, โwe have to think whether this industry is really supportiveโ of its workers.
MaCCNO director Ethan Ellestad said the former New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, now New Orleans & Company, had turned down MaCCNOโs pitch to help distribute its , a brochure outlining tipping etiquette and how visitors should approach Mardi Gras Indians, second lines, street performers and pass-the-hat performances in venues.
Efforts to enforce the cityโs living wage ordinance and ensure formerly incarcerated people have a fair shot of employment are priming New Orl…
Palmer and District B Councilmember Jay Banks said theyโll work to correct that.
โNo pot of red beans has ever cooked itself,โ said District B Councilmember Jay Banks. โThere is no magic about the longitude and latitude [attracting people to] New Orleans. Itโs the culture.โ
Palmer also suggested hotels include a video reiterating the guideโs points that plays in hotel room TVs.
But her โNo. 1 priorityโ is ensuring people who work in the cityโs service industry are able to get there, and that they have a safe place to wait for that ride. New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) operator Transdev has budgeted for 50 shelters this year, but it has 309 shelters at its 2,200 stops.
Palmer also suggested adding โcirculatorโ park-and-ride buses connecting people to areas dense with service jobs, and to require developers include bus shelters as part of their building projects in the same way that they often are required to install bike racks and parking.
โWe have to re-envision how the city provides services to our workers,โ Palmer said. โHumanity and equity for service workers riding the bus, thatโs the No. 1 thing we need to talk about.โ
To take an RTA bus from Hollygrove to her old restaurant job in the Warehouse District, Amanda Soprano used to leave home an hour and a half b…