Someone should tell the MTA that not all contract negotiations have to get serious after a contract has expired. Sometimes, they can wrap the whole thing up months before—and they can even include good news for employees. Take hotel workers, for instance. If their new contract is ratified on Monday (months before the old one ends) not only will workers start making more, but some of them will be getting outfitted with personal panic buttons—to try and prevent DSK 2: The Wrath Of Kahn, naturally.
Of course, nobody is willing to say on the record that the provision, which will equip certain employees with "devices to be carried on their persons at work that they can quickly and easily activate to effectively summon prompt assistance to their location," is in response to DSK—but let's call a spade a spade. The panic buttons should start showing up in the next year and will go to "housekeepers, room-service waiters and even the attendants who stock the minibars." Their main function will be to call for help.
And panic buttons aren't the only positive things for hotel workers in the new contract! They also are going to get raises. A typical housekeeper, according to the hotel union, currently makes $46,337 today. In the future that should go up to $59,823. The workers are also getting to keep their insurance and will see hotel owners "gradually increase their contributions to the members’ pensions to 10.5 percent of total payroll, from 9 percent."
So how are hotel workers here able to get raises when the rest of America isn't? Its all about the tourists, baby! Last year New York had a record 50+ million tourists and those people had to stay somewhere. As Peter Ward, of the hotel union, puts it, our "hotel industry is in a unique bubble in New York City." And until the bubble pops, it's nice to see the workers get a bit more of the spoils.
