Hotel News Now, a leading Global Hospitality publication, ran a two-part series about staffing challenges facing the U.S. hotel industry. I was honored to be interviewed by the publication and share my insights on the problems facing hospitality employer in these challenging times.
With the level of unemployment about 8.5 percent, why do hotels still need foreign workers? There are various reasons, from location to the attitudes of American workers. And changes in schedules and lifestyle have affected one of the former staples of summer work—students.
The situation is bad for staffing professionals in the industry, said Jacob Sapochnick, a San Diego, California-based lawyer whose practice is devoted to immigration law.
“Even though they can hire local people, they can never rely on them for the full term,” he said. “If you have a large hotel, need 50 housekeepers and hire locally, the turnover is very high. They find a better job or one that pays more. When you have H-2B workers, they know they have them for 10 months. Their visa depends on them working at that hotel.”
The more turnover, the less likely the hotel will function properly, Sapochnick said.
Read the entire article here…
The second article in the series titled, Changes make H-2B visa program more challenging for hotels, click to read here