Hotel workers still facing uncertain job prospects
OTTAWA, Ont. — COVID19 cost Randy Yadao his job in mid-March this year. A month later, the pandemic sent his his wife, Febe, home from her job, too.
The Ottawa couple was especially vulnerable because both worked in the city’s hotel industry. After 13 years, Randy, 47, was temporarily laid off from his position in the Ottawa Marriott’s laundry room. Febe similarly lost her work as a housekeeper at the Carleton Suite Hotel.
The Yadaos have struggled financially since the novel coronavirus crisis hit Ottawa, all the more because they have two daughters in elementary school and Febe’s parents live with them. Support from the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit plan helped, Randy says, and he has had some parttime work as a shopper for the grocery delivery service Instacart. In late August, Febe was called back by her employer for some part-time work.
“Before, we had full-time jobs and we could save a little bit of money in case an emergency comes up,” Randy Yadao says. “Now, we have to stretch whatever we can. Our income is not the same as what we had before.”
Given the collapse of the travel and tourism industries during the pandemic, it’s not surprising that the Yadaos are among thousands of hotel industry staff members in the Ottawa-Gatineau region — and, indeed, across Canada — whose work lives came to an abrupt halt.
Steve Ball, president of the Ottawa Gatineau Hotel Association, estimates that about 80 per cent of the 6,000 hotel workers in the region are currently laid off.
Two downtown hotels — the Albert at Bay Suite Hotel and the Best Western Plus Ottawa Downtown Suites hotel — have closed for good. The Lord Elgin has closed temporarily, as have the Metcalfe Hotel and the Capital Hill Hotel and Suites.
Hotels that remain open are operating with skeleton staffs until they can recall workers back to their jobs, Ball said.
Rather than wait to be called back, some hotel workers, such as Paul Lortal, have moved on.
The French-born 31-yearold, who has a master’s degree in hospitality management from the Vatel Hotel School in Nîmes, had been the Ottawa Marriott’s outlets manager. He oversaw Spin Kitchen and Bar, the hotel’s restaurant, in-room dining and the Starbucks coffee shop in the hotel.
“My job was busy, challenging and I had a great team,” says Lortal. But he, too, was laid off in mid-March.
Through the spring and the summer, Lortal remained optimistic that he would be recalled. He received CERB support, took online courses, exercised and visited national parks.
But at the beginning of August, while the Ottawa Marriott reopened, its restaurant did not. “I started to pivot and to realize that business won’t be coming back in the near future,” Lortal says.
He updated his resumé and because he had a dim view of hospitality jobs returning, he looked for work in retail, where his skills would be transferable. He was hired as the assistant boutique manager of a Nespresso store.
“Hospitality, the sector that I loved and that I’ve worked in for many years, is suffering and will be suffering for a while,” Lortal says. “I got scared, scared to not find a job, scared to be bored at home during the long winter months.”
He has few hopes of returning to the hotel business.
“I think I will just change course,” he says. “During my entire life, I worked in hospitality, in management. But now, considering all that’s happening in hospitality, I don’t think I’ll be back in the industry. With the travel ban, no more conventions, no private events such as weddings, the industry’s going to suffer for quite a few years. … Places that are still open struggle to survive, but they are not making a profit. Neither are they hiring.
“I feel very lucky to find a new job,” Lortal says. “I’m really looking now for stability. I don’t plan on a recall and I try to live day by day without planning too far ahead.”
Randy Yadao, who is a member of Unite Here! Local 261, the leading union for hotel and food service workers in Ottawa, said that some of his co-workers have been recalled to their jobs, and that based on seniority, he should be next to return to work.
He is worried, however, that managers may be working in his department, and that if his temporary layoff lasts beyond a year, under the terms of his collective agreement, he would become permanently laid off. His union is pushing for a oneyear extension to the time it would take for a temporary layoff to become permanent.
“I’m doing all the best I can to be positive,” Yadao says. “This is not the end of the world. There’s still hope for us. That’s what I tell my daughters.
“I tell them I can still find another job in case Marriott is not going to be calling me back. Hopefully they’re going to call me.”
To assist beleaguered hospitality and tourism workers, the federal government and the Ontario government fund the Tourism and Hospitality Emergency Response project to help workers retrain, obtain grants and relief, and find new work. Its website is tourismhospitalityworkers.ca.
“My job was busy, challenging and I had a great team.” Paul Lortal