California is often on the forefront of protecting the rights of workers, which is a great point of pride fro the state. Recently, the California Department of Industrial Relations’ Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) took up the responsibility of exploring how best to create guidelines to protect hospitality workers. Hospitality workers often face great danger of several kinds of injuries, which might be avoided with proper training and protocols for employers.
The issues most commonly suffered by those working in the hospitality industry usually have to do with repetitive motion injuries and long-term incremental damage from overexertion. The routines that housekeepers in hotels must undergo for hours at time can absolutely devastate a person’s body.
Many housekeepers work at a quick pace for hours on end to ensure that each room is properly cleaned and maintained, often entailing a great deal of bending and lifting. This is especially true when cleaning bathrooms, which are often very small and difficult to navigate. To this end, Cal/OSHA is currently considering a new set of guidelines that will help protect hospitality workers from injuries that often occur on the job.
If California successfully creates guidelines to protect hospitality workers, it will be the first state to do so. However,for those who work in the hospitality industry, there is no need to wait for government guidelines to insist on fair treatment. If you suffer from job-related injuries, do not wait any longer to speak with an experienced attorney and explore your opportunities for fair compensation and appropriate medical care.
Source: Safety Health, “Keeping hotel housekeepers safe,” Sarah Trotto, accessed May 26, 2017