Train Hotel Workers on Trafficking

Lodging facility is defined as any inn, hotel, motel, motor court or other establishment that provides lodging to transient guests, but shall not include those establishments treated as a dwelling unit or ones located within a building that has five or less rooms for rent or hire and is occupied as a residence for the owner.

This section provides that all new employees required to undergo human trafficking recognition training shall receive such training within their first month of employment. It further stipulates that training shall take place on the premises of such lodging facility and be consid- ered compensable time. Every keeper of each lodging facility shall main- tain records of all employees required to undergo human trafficking recognition training.

Section 2 provides the effective date.

Justification

We know that human trafficking is a $32 billion industry. We also have learned that young girls and boys are being victimized in our state, in our neighborhoods, whether urban, suburban, or rural, and regardless of socioeconomic level. Yet even though trafficking victims may be among us, we do not see them.

According to the Polaris Project, trafficking networks often rely on legitimate businesses, such as hotels, to sustain their illegal oper- ations. Hotels may be used to house victims while in transit or for the purchase and sale of victims' forced services, with traffickers running their business out of hotel rooms. The traffickers' ability to pay for rooms in cash or to change rooms or hotel locations on a frequent basis can make it easy for traffickers to avoid detection and purchasers of sex can take advantage of the anonymity that buying sex in a hotel room can provide. According to ECPATUSA, service providers and law enforce- ment agencies report when asked that almost every single trafficked victim with whom they came in contact had been exploited at one point in a hotel.

Traffickers capitalize on the lack of awareness on the part of hotel staff, managers and executives who often do not know what to look for or what questions to ask or are unaware that human trafficking can occur at their hotels.

Yet some in the hotel industry have realized that the criminal activity taking place in hotels presents a great risk to the safety and security of a hotel's legitimate customers as well as to the safety and security of the hotel's business, in addition to recognizing that the traffickers and the hotels that permit their properties to be utilized by traffick- ers to ply their trade must be held accountable. International Marriott, which includes the Ritz Carlton, Westin and Sheraton Hotels, through its social responsibility program, has been training its employees on how to recognize human trafficking victims since 2011. The Wyndham Hotel Group, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, Hilton and Starwood Hotels and Resorts have also been reported to have begun training. See Combatting Human Traf- ficking in the Hotel Industry, by Bradley Myles, The Blog, The Huffing- ton Post, July 22, 2016.

States too, have begun to understand the importance of utilizing the hotel industry to end human trafficking. Legislation to require hotels to train their employees and to post a notice regarding human traffick- ing, similar to this bill, was introduced in California earlier this year. Georgia enacted a law in 2013 requiring the posting of notices in hotels as well as bars, adult entertainment businesses, bus stations, truck stops and airports, among other venues. We have, by enacting legislation last year that requires hospitals and other medical facili- ties to provide human trafficking recognition training to their person- nel, already recognized that educating the people who are most likely to see or come into contact with children and young women and men who are being sexually exploited to recognize signs that they are trafficking victims is critical to ending human trafficking in New York. With this legislation, the hotel industry can assume the central role it naturally plays not only in responding to modern day slavery but also in prevent- ing it. We must take this next step towards helping human trafficking victims escape their lives of violence and enslavement.

Legislative history

2017-18: S5955B (Hamilton) - REFERRED TO CONSUMER PROTECTION

Fiscal implications

None to the State.

Effective date

This act shall take effect on the sixtieth day after it shall have become a law; provided however, paragraph d of subdivision 1 of section 210 of the general business law shall take effect immediately; provided further all employees of gaming facilities on the effective date of this act shall receive human-trafficking recognition training pursuant to this act within four months of the effective date of this act.