Lisa Barratachea has a message for labor union activists and other supporters of mandatory paid sick leave for workers: stop using the hotel and hospitality industry as an example of why the benefit is needed, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Advocates of mandatory paid sick leave paraded to the podium at City Hall and said it is the 'hospitality industry' which demonstrates that the law requiring employers to pay the benefit is needed.
"I think that people who say that, they want to just point to an industry that they believe is not taking care of their employees," Barratachea, who is the President and CEO of the San Antonio Hotel and Lodging Association, told News Radio 1200 WOAI.
But Barratachea says that stereotype is wildly inaccurate, and its time the record was corrected.
She says the type of industry that hotels and restaurants are makes it virtually impossible for employers to get away with not paying benefits.
Barratachea says, especially in today's strong economy, if an employee is dissatisfied with benefits, there is somebody out there ready to snap them up in a heartbeat.
"We are an industry that is a spring industry, where people come in, they get promoted, they leave, they move on, so we are always looking for more labor," she said.
She says the free market is doing a good job in making sure that employees get sick leave benefits, and now is not the time to mess with that dynamic.
"If you are not satisfied with your job or your pay or your benefits, there are hundreds of other hotels who want you to come work for them."
She says one of the labor union representatives who back mandatory sick leave actually told City Council that she didn't have sick leave, but later get the benefit when she switched jobs, which Barratachea says demonstrates that laws mandating the benefit are not needed.
She says the hospitality industry supports paid sick leave, but not mandatory, city imposed paid sick leave.City Council approved the benefit, but that measure, which doesn't take effect until next year, is likely to be either thrown out in the courts, or overturned by the Legislature.