California labor officials have slapped a Long Beach hotel with a hefty $4.8 million fine for failing to comply with a state law that mandates timely job offers to employees laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The California Labor Commissioner’s Office (LCO) announced on Oct. 17 that it had levied the fine against the Hyatt Regency Long Beach hotel for violating the state’s Right to Recall law (SB 93), following an investigation prompted by complaints from disaffected workers.
The LCO’s investigation, launched in September 2022, found that the Hyatt Regency Long Beach neglected to rehire 25 employees—including restaurant servers, bartenders, housepersons, turndown attendants, cashiers, and stewards—who were let go during the pandemic.
“Some of these employees had as much as 24 years of experience, and were suddenly out of work due to a public health emergency,” Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower said in a statement. “The employer failed to offer them their old jobs back in compliance with the law.”
The workers in question were laid off during the COVID-19 lockdowns but were not offered their previous positions when the hotel resumed operations, which the LCO says amounts to a violation of the Right to Recall law.
Enacted on April 16, 2021, the Right to Recall law mandates that employers in the hospitality and building services sectors must offer available job openings similar to those previously held by laid-off workers, based on seniority, once their businesses resume operations post-pandemic. This law has been extended until December 31, 2025.
Hyatt Regency Long Beach is not the first entity to face consequences for violating the Right to Recall law. In July 2022, Terranea Resort reached a settlement with the LCO, agreeing to pay $1.52 million to affected workers for similar violations related to the worker retention law.
A spokesperson for Hyatt did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lockdown Harms
Some studies have suggested that COVID-19 lockdowns worked to stem the spread of the virus.But a number of other studies have identified lockdowns as contributing to jumps in suicides, mental health crises, learning loss, and delayed health treatments.
Lockdowns Claim 20 Times More Life Years Than They Save: Study
Another recent study looked at a wide array of research into lockdowns. It concluded that such measures can be an effective tool in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic but only if “long-term collateral damage is neglected.”They also said that what deserves a “special and urgent analysis” is the question of “to what extent, why, and how the dissenting (disapproved by healthcare officials) scientific opinions were suppressed during COVID-19.”
“Suppression of ’misleading' opinions causes not only grave consequences for scientists’ moral compass; it prevents the scientific community from correcting mistakes and jeopardizes (with a good reason) public trust in science,” they wrote.