Monterey Works Because We Do!

In Monterey County, the tourism industry is second only to agriculture in generating income with annual revenues of about $2 billion (1). Peninsula cities especially rely upon hospitality industry income, as hotel taxes alone comprise over 20 percent of the entire city budgets in Carmel, Monterey, and Pacific Grove. The hospitality workers that make the industry thrive account for 14 percent of all employees in Monterey County a third of the Monterey Peninsula workforce (2).

Having recovered from industry challenges following 9-11, hotel companies are making money at near-record levels. One indication of improved revenue, Monterey County-wide hotel tax collections, reached the second highest on record in 2005 ($40.1 million), and 7.6 percent higher than just two years ago ($37.2 million in 2003) (3). According to a recent study, “hotel profits grew in excess of 20 percent for 2005 … the greatest [increase] observed since 1978” (4).

In contrast to the growing fortunes of the hotel companies, hospitality workers have been working for paychecks that buy less and less in the expensive Monterey Bay area. Hotel worker paychecks—most under $12 per hour—have not kept pace with basic costs of living. Just since 2003, for example, the median sales price of a Seaside home has nearly doubled (5), fair market Monterey County 2-bedroom rent has climbed 9% (6), average child care costs have increased 11% (7), and a gallon of gasoline costs 50% more than it did three years ago (8). Hospitality workers have been increasingly forced into hard decisions to work additional jobs, cutback on family food budgets, reduce spending on school supplies and clothes for their children, and to move—either into smaller apartments, into homes shared with other families, into less expensive places much further from work, or even into their cars.

Unionization has helped fight these trends and improve the quality of life for Monterey Bay hospitality employees. Since its founding in 1937, UNITEHERE! Local 483 (formerly the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees Union) has worked for fair pay and benefits, and better working conditions for Monterey Bay hospitality employees. UNITEHERE! Local 483 represents 1,600 workers at 15 Monterey Bay area hotels. Local 483 member struggles with hotel and restaurant managers and owners over the past 7 decades have pushed union wages 20 to 50 percent higher than average non-union wages (9), have provided for secure employee and family health insurance (where nonunion workers often must pay hundreds of dollars per month), and have demanded respect on the job.

Local 483 is part of a national campaign, Hotel Workers Rising, to rebuild the economy and make hotel jobs middle-class jobs.

Sources of Information

(1) $1.978 billion in 2005. Monterey County Convention & Visitors Bureau website, http://www.media.montereyinfo.org/?p=8464
(2) County: 21,300 “leisure & hospitality” of 153,700 “wage & salary” workers. February 2006. Source Peninsula: 11,336 “accommodation & food services” workers of 35,470 total workers, or 32%. Calculated from 2002 (most recent) U.S. Bureau of the Census (http://factfinder.census.gov) data for Carmel, Marina, Monterey, Pacific Grove, and Seaside. Pebble Beach figures added in from “Estimated Jobs by Location in Monterey County,” Employment and Cost of Living Trends in Monterey County, Applied Development Economics, February 7, 2001, p. 20.
(3) “Monterey County 2005 Tourism Update,” Ernest Hoffman Consulting, April 3, 2006, pp. 3, 8.
(4) “Monterey County 2005 Tourism Update,” Ernest Hoffman Consulting, April 3, 2006, p. 8.
(5) Mid-2003 (January to June) median sales price was $366,750 versus March 2006 price of $705,000, a 92% increase. “MLS Sales Stats” tables, Monterey County Association of Realtors, http://www.mcar.com/stats.html.
(6) Housing and Urban Development figures for 2003, $979, and 2006, $1069. “Fair Market” is not the average or median monthly rent, but the 40th percentile price (60 percent of rents are more than this). http://www.huduser.org/datasets/fmr.html.
(7) California Child Care Resource and Referral Network annual figures for Monterey County from 2002, $5,965, and 2004/5, $6,626. 2003 and 2005 “Child Care Portfolios,” http://www.rrnetwork.org.
(8) April 11, 2006 average price per gallon in Monterey County, $2.84, versus May 13, 2003, $1.91, from Northern California AAA webpage “Current Gas Prices,” http://www.csaa.com/yourcar/gaspriceschart/0,7069,,00.html.
(9) UNITEHERE Local 483 Hyatt Regency contract, 2003 compared to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage information for Monterey County.