Gina Alcos, an Ala Moana Hotel banquet captain, has had weeks this month when she’s worked only four hours, making it hard to survive and putting health care benefits for her entire family at risk.

The mass hotel layoffs of last year are gone; however, many workers are still getting very few hours, especially those like Alcos who are employed in departments that cater to groups, events, banquets, and food and beverage operations that have been severely limited by county and state coronavirus restrictions.

“Last month, I only worked 72 hours and I needed 80 hours to get medical benefits. I had to pay $1,000 out of pocket,” Alcos said. “I’ve had to pay for medical out of pocket for four months, and so basically I’ve drained all my savings and tapping into the 401(k) is the next step.”

The schedule restrictions, coupled with the tourism downturn, have created a Catch-22 for some union workers: If they leave their current jobs, they’ll lose their hard-won seniority and the right to be first to get scheduled hours, as well as valuable union benefits, including free family medical insurance for life in retirement.

“If I hang on for five more years, I can retire at 62 and my family gets full medical without any premiums,” said Alcos, 57. “We aren’t paid the most but that benefit is one of the best.”

But staying comes with costs, too. Alcos, who has spent 31 years at the Ala Moana Hotel, has the most seniority of the banquet staff, but even she doesn’t have enough hours to always get medical benefits. If union workers fall too short of hours in any one-month period, they may lose health care coverage for the next three months.

Daren Miyasato, who has spent 26 years as a full-time banquet worker at Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort and Spa, said he is among the union workers who are delaying retirement. The 61-year-old Miyasato said he no longer has enough health care coverage credits accrued to get the free medical benefit once he stops working.

Additionally, he’s had to tap so heavily into his retirement and savings accounts to cover current expenses that he needs to build them back up to a more comfortable level.

“From July to August, I think I only had nine days of working. I didn’t qualify for any medical. As of September, I had no unemployment because I had not worked enough in the last 17 months to qualify for the new claim,” Miyasato said. “It’s pushed me back about five years. I’ll have to wait until I reach 67, full Social Security, at this point.”

Easing restrictions

Unite Here Local 5 would like the counties and state to consider loosening event restrictions.

Tim Sakahara, spokesman for Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi, said, “As COVID-19 case counts and hospitalizations continue to drop, the city is continuing discussions with the state to ease additional restrictions and allow more activities, including allowing greater audiences at managed events.”

Union workers also want the state to consider using federal pandemic relief funds to provide additional support for unemployed workers who have run out of benefits while working in restricted industries.

Alcos said it’s hard to understand how a restaurant is allowed to operate at 50% capacity but banquets can’t be held in ballrooms where there is much more space to spread out.

“We’re out of money, out of unemployment and these mandates are keeping us from working,” Alcos said. “We want to go to work or have them pay us. They are the reason that we don’t have money. They could use American Rescue Plan Act funds to cover unemployment.”

The situation is tough for Hawaii hotels too, although some like Prince Resorts Hawaii have managed to cover medical benefits for their 1,500 or so nonunion and union employees, who belong to ILWU Local 142.

“We made a decision from early on to have our employees’ health insurance covered no matter what the hours you worked, whether you are furloughed or not, so that they don’t have to worry,” said Prince Resorts Hawaii President Kisan Jo.

“For me, I have a family of my own, too, and we knew all of us individually that we were walking into a pandemic. If you get sick, you need to go to the hospital or see a doctor, and the last thing we want to do is say, ‘Guys, you have not worked enough. You don’t have medical insurance.’ You have got to have medical insurance when you need it the most.”

Jo said 90% of Prince Resorts Hawaii’s workforce has returned to their jobs. All three Prince Resorts Hawaii hotels were recognized last month as leaders in the industry in Travel + Leisure Magazine’s “Top 20 Hotels In Hawaii” annual list, with Prince Waikiki voted No. 2; Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, No. 8; and The Westin Hapuna Beach Resort, No. 13.

Even so, Jo said full recovery will still take a while. He added that it will take more consistent hotel occupancy and travel volumes to return employees to full work hours, and certain sectors like events and banquets are further behind.

“We still have a long way to go in terms of catering and banquets and some of the weddings, at least on the Honolulu side,” Jo said. “Out on the neighbor islands, we are a little bit fortunate to have certain exemptions to host certain weddings and certain events.”

Slow recovery

As a whole, Hawaii hotels were recently projected to lose $1.18 billion in business travel revenue in 2021, down 77.4% compared to 2019 levels, according to a recent report from the Washington, D.C.-based American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) and Kalibri Labs.

Business travel, which includes corporate, group, government and other commercial categories, is the hotel industry’s largest source of revenue and is not expected to reach pre-pandemic levels until 2024. It’s potentially worse in Hawaii, where COVID-19 containment measures have limited the size of indoor and outdoor gatherings.

Local economist Paul Brewbaker, principal of TZ Economics, said the recovery in employment and jobs in Hawaii “began to stall out a little over the summer,” when tourism rebounded to about 70% to 75% of capacity, before getting “knocked back” by the emergence of the highly contagious delta variant.

A lifeline for workers

A federal bill called the Save Hotel Jobs Act could help to extend a lifeline to hotel workers and provide the assistance needed to survive until travel returns to pre-pandemic levels. U.S. Reps. Ed Case and Kaiali‘i Kahele, both from Hawaii, have signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation, introduced by Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz and Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida.

The measure is currently before Congress and would direct 100% of its funding to keep hotel workers on the payroll.

“My bill continues to gain support in Congress,” Schatz said in an email. “We are working hard to find a path to getting it passed and signed into law, so that we can provide some much-needed relief for Hawaii’s hotel workers.”

The Save Hotel Jobs Act would support hotel workers through direct grants that could underwrite payroll and benefits. The legislation also would protect seniority by requiring grantees to give laid-off workers recall rights to their jobs.

Additionally, it would grant hotels tax credits to cover 50% of the costs associated with personal protective equipment, pandemic-­related technology investments, employee COVID-19 testing and enhanced cleaning protocols.

Jo said passage of the bill “would definitely help our employees not just for a single year but at least for the next few years ahead. We know it will take some time to ramp up to where we should be pre-pandemic.”

AHLA President and CEO Chip Rogers said in a statement, “While many other hard-hit industries have received targeted federal relief, the hotel industry has not. We need Congress to pass the bipartisan Save Hotel Jobs Act so hotels can retain and rehire employees until travel demand, especially business travel, comes back to pre-pandemic levels.”

According to AHLA research, hotels are expected to end the year down nearly 500,000 jobs compared to 2019, including more than 12,500 lost jobs in Hawaii.

For every 10 people directly employed on a hotel property, AHLA said hotels support an additional 26 jobs in the community, from those in restaurants and retail to hotel supply companies, meaning an additional nearly 1.3 million hotel-supported jobs are also at risk nationwide unless Congress acts.