Marriott workers say they are drowning in credit union fees

Out of the roughly $30,000 that Amos Troyah made last year as a dishwasher at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, $2,000 went toward fees to the Marriott Employees' Federal Credit Union.

Troyah's story is common, according to a recent New York Times article: housekeepers, cooks, and other low-wage workers at the Marriott, many of whom are black and Latino, say they're turning over a chunk of their paychecks to cover overdraft ($35), automatic-transfer ($6), and minimum-balance fees ($10) on their checking and savings accounts with the credit union.

Around the country, nearly 8,000 Marriott workers represented by union Unite HERE have been on strike since early October. In Philadelphia, the same union is backing workers at the Marriott Downtown as they demand that their employer sign an agreement saying it will not interfere with the unionization process. (A Marriott spokesperson declined to comment on unionization matters.)

Even though their wages are above average, Philly workers have said they're actually making less money because they've been getting scheduled for fewer hours. Last Friday, they hosted a rally outside their workplace, the biggest hotel in the state, where Gov. Wolf and Mayor Kenney spoke in support of their bid to organize.

In a new report from left-leaning think tank Demos, researchers Amy Traub and Julia Gunn point to Philly workers' experiences with unpredictable scheduling and their subsequent use of short-term, mini-loans as a way that the hotel company is exacerbating racial inequality in the United States. Earlier this week, the Rev. Greg Holston, executive director of interfaith justice group POWER, made a similar point.

The Marriott, he said, doesn't give its workers enough hours, so they take out these loans and are then effectively indebted to their employer because they have to work more to pay off the loans.

"These stories evoke nothing less than the legacy of sharecropping," read a letter signed by Holston and three other black religious leaders, including the Rev. Alyn Waller of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church and the Rev. Jay Broadnax, president of the Black Clergy of Philadelphia.

Holston, Waller, and Broadnax tried to deliver the letter Monday afternoon, but the Marriott's market director for human relations, Bruce Brobeck, refused to take it, saying he did not have control over the credit union because it's a separate institution from the Marriott.

"Nobody ever told anybody they had to take a loan," Brobeck told the group of ministers in the hotel lobby.

The mini-loans shouldn't be a way of life, he said, but some workers use it that way. He said he tells the workers when they come to him to get the forms for a loan: "Guys, let's manage your money better."

Glenn Newton, the CEO of the credit union, told the Times that overdraft fees had actually decreased by nearly 10 percent between 2013 and 2017 and that he believed that situations like Troyah's were not common. He also said that the interest rates offered on the credit union's mini-loans were much lower than that of payday loans.

The Marriott said in a statement to the Inquirer and Daily News that it had asked the credit union to research the impact of its fees on members to see if changes should be made.

The company also shot back at the Demos report, pointing out that it pays "significantly above" minimum wage and recently expanded benefits for its hourly workers including an increased retirement savings match and eight weeks of paid parental leave.

"In this day and age, it seems all too easy to mash up information to suit one's purposes under the guise of facts or research," the Marriott said in a statement. "Unfortunately, this report does just that to demonize Marriott as the cause of racial inequality. This is simply not true."

Credit unions, not-for-profits that receive a federal tax subsidy for being a nonprofit, were originally designed to serve workers who didn't have access to the kinds of bank accounts that their wealthier colleagues had. Through money made off loans, usually to those wealthier colleagues, credit unions were able to offer accounts for little to no cost. But over the years, as revenue from loans shrank, credit unions raised their fees.

Charging fees, the argument went, was justifiable because it was simply asking customers to pay for services provided. It wasn't fair to ask customers to subsidize those who were overdrafting their accounts.

But, the Times reported, "the effect in many cases is that the people least able to bear the costs of operating a credit union are gradually paying more of them."

Also: "The fees that an average Marriott credit union member pays across all services — $94 last year — are far higher than at these other institutions, and higher than at credit unions of a similar size."

Student loans and housing loans offered to black people but with predatory terms are other examples of predatory inclusion. Seamster and Charron-Chénier have argued that predatory inclusion perpetuates economic inequality between races.

Credit unions functioning like that of the Marriott employees fit this bill, Seamster and Charron-Chénier said, because they were designed to serve low-wage workers and also profit from their position as supposedly more ethical institutions than, say, traditional banks.

>>READ MORE: These are the students most crushed by the debt crisis

Philadelphia Media Network is one of 21 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the city's push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at https://brokeinphilly.org