Case study: Grand Hotel takes action

Detroiter, June, 2008 by R.D. Musser

Michigan's tourism industry faces a very serious threat this summer that only quick action by Congress can remedy-a lack of enough workers to fully staff operations.

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For seasonal businesses who cannot offer year-round employment, the challenge of identifying a dependable, skilled workforce has always been significant. For those of us located in northern Michigan, several hundred miles from major population centers, the challenge has been even more daunting.

Each year Grand Hotel makes a major effort to identify U.S. workers to fully staff our operations through a variety of methods including advertising and working with job fairs and culinary institutions and others. But these programs have not provided us with the workforce we need.

Some 30 years ago, we began to look to foreign nationals to fill positions for which we were finding no U.S. citizens were available. Because the Jamaican tourist season runs from roughly December 15th through April 15th, it dovetails perfectly with our season, which runs from May through October.

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Guest workers have come to the U.S. under a special H2B visa which has allowed them to enter the U.S. to fill jobs for which U.S. workers are not available. At least 70 northern Michigan businesses have been relying on H2B workers, as have other seasonal employers around the country.

The result has been mutually beneficial for the businesses and the workers. At Grand Hotel we've had less than 5 percent turnover from year to year. Last year, more than 100 of our H2B workers had been with us at least 10 years, a fact in which we take pride and which speaks to the strong relationship we have with our workforce.

Nationally, the number of H2B visas was capped at 66,000 a year in 1990. When visa requests from employers mushroomed, Congress allowed returning workers to be exempt from the cap starting in 2004. More than 120,000 H2B visas were granted last year. But the exemption expired in September, when it was tied into the immigration reform effort that failed to pass. As a result, many businesses in northern Michigan and throughout the country have been faced with a severe labor shortage this summer.

Through an intensive winter-long effort, at Grand Hotel we have been able to identify enough workers to be fully staffed this year by using two other types of visas and identifying H2B workers who were already in the country working at winter resorts out west. But if the problem is not fixed by next year, our challenge will be much more serious.

For many other seasonal businesses, the threat is much more immediate, resulting in one more shock to Michigan's economy at a time when this state doesn't need any more bad news. Fortunately, Congressman Bart Stupak is leading a bi-partisan effort in Congress to fix this problem. I went to Washington in April to testify before the House Subcommittee on Immigration. Citizenship. Refugees, Border security and International Law on behalf of the legislation. Congressman John Conyers, who is chair of the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the subcommittee, made it clear during the hearing that he is strongly supportive of our efforts, so we are hopeful that something will happen soon.

For the northern Michigan tourist industry, this is truly a life or death issue. Without the H2B workers who have become a regular part of northern Michigan, many of our businesses face a very real, very immediate threat to their existence. We should urge all of our Congressional delegation to make this matter, which is so important to one of this state's key industries, an immediate priority.

R.D Musser II is presicent of Grand Hotel