Weinberg, Greenstein Bill to Require Hotels to Provide Panic Devices to Employees Passed Senate

Trenton – A bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg and Senator Linda Greenstein, that would require hotels to provide portable panic devices to housekeeping staff or other room servicing employees to protect them from inappropriate conduct by guests, passed the Senate yesterday.

“No one should ever have to work in fear,” said Senator Weinberg (D-Bergen). “Hotel employees are regularly put in vulnerable positions when they service private rooms. Giving them a panic device in case of harassment and assault, however, will go a long way to ensuring their safety, security and workplace wellbeing.”

The bill, S-2986, would require hotels to keep records of the accusations made against a guest for alleged violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment or any other inappropriate conduct and criminal activities and to report them to law enforcement.  Hotels would be required to keep the names of guests who are involved in one of these incidents on a list for five-years from the date of the incident while making the presence and location of the guest known to the employee that was involved.  The employee involved would be reassigned to work in an area away from that guest’s room.  Other employees would be given the option of either servicing the guest’s room with a partner or opting out of servicing the room entirely.

“It is rarely discussed, but hotel employees work in a world that combines anonymity with seclusion,” said Senator Greenstein (D-Mercer/Middlesex). “With this legislation we can give these employees a sense of safety most of us take for granted in our places of work.”

The bill would place a three-year ban on a guest if they are convicted of a crime in connection with the incident in question.

All hotel employees would be required to receive proper education on the panic devices and their rights, and it would be required that all hotel guest be made aware of panic devices via a sign in a prominent location, or within the hotel’s terms and condition of occupancy.

Employers would be subjected to a $5,000 civil penalty for its first violation and a $10,000 penalty for each subsequent violation, collected by the Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

The bill was passed by the Senate with a vote of 38-0.