YES! on Measure Z

Hotel housekeepers, who are predominantly women of color, work in private spaces — including men’s hotel rooms — and experience sexual assault at an alarming rate. According to a recent survey, 1 in 4 have felt threatened by hotel guests, and more than half have experienced a guest opening the door naked or exposing himself. Many also experience low pay, wage theft and backbreaking workloads that leave them exhausted.

Measure Z, the Time’s Up Oakland initiative, protects hotel workers in the following ways:

  1. Addresses sexual assault in the workplace among hotel workers by providing a panic button to every hotel room cleaner and creating procedures to protect workers who are assaulted or threatened on the job.

  2. Sets living wage and workload standards for hospitality workers, to help them earn fair wages for a fair day’s work, and take care of their families.

And Measure Z protects ALL Oakland workers by creating a Department of Workplace and Employment Standards to enhance enforcement measures that ensure that all low-wage workers in Oakland get paid at least the minimum wage and have fair workplaces.

Oakland’s hotel workers deserve safe workplaces, free from the threat of sexual violence, and they should feel supported when filing complaints or removing themselves from unsafe situations. Like so many women across the country, hotel workers in Oakland are standing up to stay Time’s Up on sexual assault and wage theft.

Measure Z By the Numbers:

  • Measure Z would affect about 1,500 hotel workers in Oakland, who would benefit from the panic button and sexual assault prevention measures .

  • About 600 to 750 workers would also receive significant immediate improvements from the hotel living wage standard and workload limits that set a maximum of square footage to be cleaned per day per worker.

  • Over 27,000 Oakland voters signed a petition to qualify Measure Z for the November ballot.

  • In a recent poll, 82% of Oakland voters say that they support hotel workers’ right to have panic buttons.

  • Oakland would be 1 of 5 municipalities in the United States, and part of a growing movement, to require hotel owners to provide panic buttons to workers.