Hotels to be forced to rehire workers? Assembly to vote

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At Tuesday’s Assembly meeting Chairman Felix Rivera and member Forrest Dunbar plan to push a measure dictating to “large” hotels they must offer to rehire workers laid off because of COVID-19 or retain them after changes in owership.

Their proposed ordinance, AO 2020-84(S), would provide “protection for hotel workers’ employment by amending Anchorage Municipal Code with a new chapter requiring large hotel employers to offer rehire to employees laid off in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to retain eligible workers for a period of time after a change in ownership or control, and thereafter consider offering them continued employment….”

Since when does government get to tell employers large or small what they will and will not do when it comes to employment? Is that not the realm of unions and owners? Where is it written that city officials can require employers to rehire workers or keep them on the books, not just after the COVID-19 pandemic, but after a sale or change of ownership?

Perhaps some of our august Assembly got used to the heady notion of dictating policy during their silly ban on plastic bags that also had private businesses charging 10 cents for a bag – and then ordering them to show that on a receipt.

One of the ban’s sponsors said at the time the 10-cent fee was designed to “coerce people to change their behavior.” Now Assembly members are mandating business hiring and retention practices.

We suggest that if Rivera and Dunbar really want to stick their noses into the whozits, whatzits and howzits of hotel hiring and firing they should buy their own hotel and have a field day.

But micro-managing hotels should not be an Assembly function.

23 COMMENTS

  1. I agree. Alaska is an at-will employment state, the last I remember. However, even if it was a for-cause state- government dies not dictate hiring in commercial business.

    I do not know how much authority they have for hiring and firing beyond the Mayor within the City as an entity.

    The assumption that government needs to intervene to save jobs for on industry is creating a horrible precedent.

    I have not come across one governmental beauracracy that I would look at as a model for commerce, free enterprise, and creator of jobs/personal wealth.

  2. Time to tell these rogue Assembly as*hats you don’t dictate anything to a private business. I hope the businesses come in and tell the Assembly to butt the he double hockey sticks out.

    • They can’t come in and tell the assembly anything because the assembly is banning the public from testifying in person under the pretext of some virus that has no effect on over 99 percent of the population. In essence, government without representation.

  3. When did these numbskull Assembly members get their crowns as gods among us? This is socialism and left-wing radicalism for them to think they can dictate to private business as they have continued their predator tactics on us the public. Their arrogance is unbelievable and unconscionable!

  4. “We suggest that if Rivera and Dunbar really want to stick their noses into the whozits, whatzits and howzits of hotel hiring and firing they should buy their own hotel and have a field day.”

    …..But they are buying a hotel….with cares act funds……

  5. The Anchorage Politburo has little or no jurisdiction in this. The relations between a private employer and its employees are almost exclusively a State and federal matter. Maybe one if the mental midgets on the Politburo can tell us where they find the jurisdiction.

    • And are you going to run down and write the checks to pay these people, for which there exists zero work? Some of these “victims” sat at home and refused work when it was offered to take advantage of the ridiculously high unemployment benefits provided for in the CARES act. Get over this mentality that somehow it is the job of someone else to catch everybody when they fall. It is a ridiculous assumption

    • It wasn’t the hotels’ fault either. Business is so bad here between the shut-downs and the suffocated tourism industry that very likely some, even many, hotels cannot afford to re-hire everyone they had on the payroll (and they won’t have any work for them to do, either).

  6. I’m sure workers laid off would be rehired if there is enough business to support that. Those laid off have experience & skills to walk back in & get to working without training etc. If they were good employees in the first place this seems like a no brainer for an employer. Seems the best thing the Assembly could do is to do things to encourage business to return to the community. The hiring will take care of itself if that happens

  7. Damn right, the assembly has no right, legal or otherwise, to obligate any industry to hire in any manner what so ever. There exist laws to protect the rights of an applicant in a labor contract, there exists no excuse for the assembly to attempt to insert itself in the rights of the business owner. It is already unconstitutional, the mandates put forth by the mayor under the umbrella of the “emergency powers” the assembly bestowed on him. It is like medieval Britain around here, with the mayor acting as king and the assembly behaving like nobles with their serfs at their disposal. Screw this bunch of oligarchs.

  8. Aside from all the valid points about overreach that I fully agree with, my mind went straight to the following low-hanging fruit:

    Ok, let’s just imagine it passes. (Not much of a stretch if one looks at their recent record.)
    Evidently, none of these constitutional scholars has grasped the concept of Equal protection under the law. (14th amendment section I)

    So, on the first meeting after it passes, I would imagine every:
    Truck driver
    Pilot
    Food service worker
    Dog groomer
    Etc.etc…….

    will be wondering what’s so special about motel employees, and why is there no mandate to hire them back too!

    The politburo and Uncle Joe Halfwitz are so far down the pike that I actually laughed when I read this. It isn’t funny, but I don’t know what else to do.

    • What’s so important about hotel employees? A bunch of them are unionized. This is little more than the Assembly protecting those that put them into office. Cheers –

  9. Just recently I’ve been paying attention to news in Anchorage. And I have to say after reading this article, I am very surprised and disappointed that Anchorage is leaning socialist. Very disheartening

  10. Looks like an attempt to keep hotels from using COVID-19/or change in ownership as an excuse to fire union workers and replace them with non-union labor?

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