NAACP Hospitality Report Card

WHEREAS, the mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination; and

WHEREAS, there has been an alarming trend recently where there has been an increase in employment in the hotel industry overall but has declined for African Americans; and

WHEREAS, the African Americans that are employed in the hotel industry are subjected to de facto segregation, where they are relegated to "back of the house" jobs, and out of more visible "front of the house" jobs; and

WHEREAS, UNITE HERE has taken proactive steps to ensure these two alarming trends in the hotel industry are reversed and also has a comprehensive industry knowledge base that can be useful in determining which hotel corporations contribute to these problems; and

WHEREAS, the NAACP Hospitality Report Card is a means to promote transparency within the hotel industry so that those hotel corporations that are respectful of the African American community are recognized for their good efforts and

WHEREAS, the NAACP Hospitality Report Card is a prestigious publication, read widely by many groups across a broad ideological spectrum, which informs the buying patterns of individual hotel consumers and industry meeting planners; and

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that for the reasons stated above, the NAACP will more heavily and carefully Weigh the treatment of workers - which includes (but is not limited to) access to living wages, access to affordable healthcare, access to pensions/affordable retirement savings plans, discrimination and freedom to join a Union in an environment free from intimidation and harassment - when determining grades for hotel operators in its hospitality report card; and

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that the NAACP will use UNITE HERE's broad institutional knowledge base, and will partner with the Union to help gain an understanding of these issues and to help inform the grades of the hotel corporations in the portions of the hospitality report card outlined above.