DESPITE being a tourist haven, Sabah’s hotel front-liners are earning around 30% less than their peninsula counterparts, a situation that offers little hope of upward mobility for its rural youth who depend on such jobs for a living.

The average starting salary of waiters, housekeeping and stewards in Sabah is RM1,000, said Sabah Hotel Employees Union secretary Ladis Yaman.

Similar positions in Johor and Kuala Lumpur, however, start between RM1,400 and RM1,500 respectively. 

Part-time servers at banquet halls make RM4.50 to RM5.30 per hour in Sabah, while those in the peninsula earn RM6 or RM7 per hour. 

Even Labuan hotel workers earn more than their mainland Sabah counterparts, who take home around RM1,200 to RM1,700 a month. 

Sabah has enjoyed a tourism boom in recent years with high occupancy rates and is, in fact, facing a shortage of rooms.

Last year, Sabah recorded RM8.342 billion in tourism receipts and welcomed 3.879 million arrivals. This exceeded 2017 figures at 3.685 million arrivals and tourism receipts of RM7.82 billion.

But little of this growth is trickling down to most hotel front-line workers in the state, many of whom come from rural districts, have no tertiary education and are trying to make a living in the state capital, Kota Kinabalu, said Ladis.

“Most of them are form five school-leavers and rent rooms in the city,” he told The Malaysian Insight. 

Room rental in Kota Kinabalu is around RM250 a month without an attached bathroom, while a master bedroom ranges from RM500 to RM1,500 a month. 

“With the prices of goods in Sabah, most of them find it hard to save even RM100 by end of the month,” Ladis said.

The prices of goods in Kota Kinabalu are around 30% higher than in the peninsula and Sarawak because of the logistics costs incurred from bringing in goods through Port Klang in Selangor.

Ladis works as a steward at the Shangri-La Tanjung Aru Beach Hotel, which is the only hotel in the state with a union and a collective agreement between the hotel management and workers. 

The hotel employs the service points system for salaries, where one point is worth RM315 due to the hotel’s high occupancy rate. 

The starting salary at the hotel, however, is RM545 a month, plus three points added per month. 

Ladis said Sabah’s hotel workers could be pushing for better wages for themselves, but many did not understand the unions and are afraid of joining for fear of getting sacked.

This has resulted in most hotels in the state ditching the service points system and paying fixed salaries instead.

When they removed the service point system, hotels also removed the 10% service charge that would have funded it, he added.

This has led to hotels raising the prices of guest services and food.

Sabah Hotel Association president Christopher Chan denied that hotels are underpaying workers. He said operators are keeping to the law and remunerating their workers accordingly.

“It is not operators who are being tight on finances but there is the Sabah and Sarawak Labour Ordinance which sets the minimum wage order,” he said. 

The minimum wage order amended in 2018 saw the cap being set at RM1,100 a month nationwide and the rates for part-timers set at RM5.30 per hour. 

Chan added that it is harder now to keep a hotel business afloat, no thanks to the internet, as travellers usually sought discounts and cheaper prices online. – July 21, 2019.