Hotel Worker Employment Data Reveals Paycheck Protection Program’s Failure to Keep Workers on Payroll

As Congress continues to debate further Paycheck Protection Program aid, UNITE HERE Local 11’s analysis of internal hotel worker employment levels in Los Angeles County, Orange County, and Phoenix from May to October reveals that the PPP failed in its primary goal of returning workers to their jobs, and instead bailed out large hotel chains on a massive scale.

The pandemic has devastated tourism and travel more than any other economic sector. Unemployment remains near 90% and with further restrictions of hotel use as the pandemic worsens, it appears even fewer jobs will exist in the next six months.

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Local 11 represents workers at 24 hotels that were collectively approved for $40 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans. This group of hotels are owned by global private equity firms, foreign companies and hotel operators worth billions, but their hotel workers remained laid off en-masse despite the PPP, and many hotels even refused to make payments necessary to cover health insurance benefits for laid-off workers.

Internal Local 11 membership data reveal that 10 out of 24 hotel borrowers appear not to qualify for loan forgiveness based on hotel worker employment levels during the SBA’s covered period for PPP loans. Per SBA rules, borrowers had until the end of the 24-week covered period following loan disbursement to spend 60% of their loan on payroll if they intended to seek loan forgiveness. However, 10 of the 24 hotel borrowers averaged less than 25% of pre-pandemic employment from May to October, the covered period following when most loans were approved and disbursed in mid-to-late April.

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Borrowers were approved for loans based on 2.5 times their monthly pre-pandemic payroll, and had to spend 60% of this amount on payroll during the covered period—an amount equal to 1.5 times pre-pandemic monthly payroll—to qualify for loan forgiveness. However, because these 10 borrowers averaged less than 25% payroll per month, they would not have been able to pay the amount necessary to get loan forgiveness. Overall, all 24 borrowers averaged only 27% of pre-pandemic payroll over the covered period. Struggling laid-off hotel workers are left to wonder whether hotel owners used the rest of their PPP loans to line their pockets.

The DoubleTree Santa Monica is one of the 10 hotels that based on Local 11’s analysis that appears not to qualify for loan forgiveness. Westmont Hospitality Group, which employs Doubletree workers and owns the property with $8 billion private equity firm Square Mile Capital Management and insurance giant USAA, was approved for 12 PPP loans totaling nearly $11 million for different hotel entities registered to its Houston, TX, headquarters that were reportedly tied to the retention of 1,521 jobs. Meanwhile, the Doubletree averaged only 10% of pre-pandemic employment during the covered period.

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