A group of federal lawmakers is urging the U.S. Department of Labor and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to investigate some prominent Los Angeles hotels and their contracted staffing agencies for possible labor violations in their treatment of migrant workers.
Local hotels — or staffing agencies operating on their behalf — may have engaged in “potentially predatory behavior” toward unhoused refugees from Venezuela and Colombia hired to work at their properties, House Democrats said in a letter sent on Monday to the federal agencies. The letter named hotels including Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica, the Four Points by Sheraton, the Holiday Inn LAX, and the Pasadena Hilton.
The letter cites reporting by The Times on recent migrants living in a Skid Row shelter recruited to work at unionized hotels in Santa Monica and near Los Angeles International Airport where employees had gone on strike. Some hired appeared to be among hundreds of migrants shipped on buses to L.A. this year by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Migrant workers hired as temporary replacements said they were assigned heavy cleaning loads and long hours; some were not told how much they would be paid or given breaks.
“The reported exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers to undermine hotel workers’ efforts to win livable wages and other improvements in labor standards is deeply troubling,” lawmakers said in the letter.
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Among the 27 congressional members who signed are House Democrats from L.A....
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