From London 2012 to Qatar 2022 - The Hotel Industry and the Protection of Workers

The hotel industry is still not making needed reforms to protect workers

The 2012 London Olympics brought to greater public awareness often hidden issues linked to major events and the responsibilities of their hosts. How could global games be used to advance social objectives? How can they help to promote diversity and inclusion?  What impacts do they have on local communities and businesses adjacent to new infrastructure and do they truly benefit even as cities like London use these moments to build their brands, reputations, and futures?

In the lead up to the London Olympics, construction was undertaken thoughtfully and carefully with a high regard for health and safety. There were clear requirements in place to ensure respect for workforces.  Extensive efforts also went into ensuring the integrity of supply chains.

What London organisers had little control over, however, were the range of companies who, whilst not directly connected, would benefit from the Games. An obvious example being London hotels who stood to gain enormous advantage from the Olympics, not just for the duration of the event, but beyond.

London hotels were primed for an Olympic sized boost. And yet, if you looked closer, you could see a hotel industry that had become dependent on business models driven by workers employed on reduced terms and conditions, low wages, and lack of respect for labour rights. The ubiquitous use of outsourced agency labour - nearly all migrant workers - allowed hotel companies to distance themselves from their workforce and with it an employer’s responsibilities and commitments. In shirking this responsibility a door was left open to ever more exploitative terms and conditions for hotel workers who faced demanding work schedules, low wages, unrealistic piece work rates, and constant issues around overtime, holiday and sick pay.

How could global games be used to advance social objectives? How can they help to promote diversity and inclusion?  What impacts do they have on local communities and businesses adjacent to new infrastructure and do they truly benefit even as cities like London use these moments to build their brands, reputations, and futures?

These practices certainly weren’t caused by the London Olympics. The reality is that they had become part of the normal ways the hotel industry operated, reliant on employment agencies for whom there was little oversight or concern for workforces who were “off the books”. As employment relationships were replaced by business contracts between companies, hotels chose to look the other way.

There was perhaps an expectation that the Olympics would bring additional scrutiny to such situations or that business models usually tucked neatly out of sight could be examined and challenged. The absence of such scrutiny of the industry resulted in growing demands for new approaches that could highlight how hotels were benefiting from the troubling activities of those in their supply chains.

As the London Olympics approached, IHRB and AntiSlavery International partnered to develop the Staff Wanted Initiative, designed as a campaign that sent information and guidance on labour rights best practices to all hotels in London. The Initiative called on these companies to follow the SEE Formula:

• Scrutinise contracts with labour providing agencies
• Engage with their workforces whether direct hires or employed via agencies
• Ensure that workers were not being exploited

We also urged governments to better regulate and license these agencies so that their labour practices would meet international standards. An Early Day Motion in the UK Parliament attracted support from 53 members.

Despite these efforts, the results of our initiative were disappointing. There was little engagement from leaders in the hotel industry who seemed unwilling to take any responsibility for business models that inevitably compromised workers or from a government intent on less not more regulation of all industries. The result was a situation that not only failed to protect workers but failed as well to protect law abiding business seeking to do the right thing.

A decade later, the FIFA World Cup in Qatar is uniting fans of football all over the world. Qatar hopes that hosting this global event will help it achieve a similar outcome to London in 2012. The World Cup provides an opportunity to show the world what is best about their country, and to build a national brand to position Qatar for a future beyond the hydrocarbon economy that has fuelled phenomenal growth.

As was expected, Qatar hosting the World Cup has drawn intense global scrutiny, and this time on another business model, which allows exploitation and failure to adhere to international standards. The Kafala system sees the visas of migrant workers traded and sold as migrants bear the final costs of their recruitment, a situation that leaves many indebted and vulnerable to further exploitation. There has been a particular focus on the construction sector and in workers building World Cup infrastructure, the majority of whom worked in punishing conditions and nearly all paying large recruitment fees for the chance to work in the country.

Changes in Qatar only seemed to come about through the combined efforts of ...broader public scrutiny. Was that public interest only because it was at the extreme end of the spectrum? If so, what can we hope for ending and preventing ongoing labour exploitation including persistent wage theft, lack of grievance mechanisms, and other labour rights abuses?

Recruitment fees are also the reality facing many of those working in Qatar’s hotels. In partnership with the ILO, we at IHRB produced clear guidance for the industry on best recruitment practices of hotel workers. Once more, however, we have been disappointed by an industry that still seems unwilling to commit to serious reforms, as well as by the limited engagement of industry associations – bodies that can offer crucial insights on industry-specific trends and influence industry policy and behaviour. As revealed in a survey report from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, despite constant promises, very few hotel companies in Qatar have made any meaningful engagement to address human rights risks. This situation is furthermore reflected globally from an industry that continues to lag well behind many other sectors in implementing stronger human rights due diligence processes.

This needs to change. There are no shortage of commitments by hotel companies to improving their practice or guidance tools and frameworks that they could deploy. What is lacking is effective scrutiny to provoke change in an industry that seems resistant to reform.

Due to the scrutiny of the construction industry brought about by the World Cup, we have seen some welcome changes across parts of that sector in Qatar. We may then like to think that major events like the World Cup help deliver change. But changes in Qatar only seemed to come about through the combined efforts of activists, trade unions and civil society groups, the International Labour Organization, and broader public scrutiny. Was that public interest only because it was at the extreme end of the spectrum? If so, what can we hope for ending and preventing ongoing labour exploitation including persistent wage theft, lack of grievance mechanisms, and other labour rights abuses?

Qatar’s experience over recent years demonstrates that the most egregious abuses and stories of deaths on construction sites can lead to global demands for reform that lead to change. But the hotel sector appears once more to have passed under the radar. The slow but regular continuum of exploitation faced by hotel workers, usually migrants, often women, still somehow fails to excite attention. Will it be the same by the next World Cup in 2026?  We can only hope not.