3,000 Mob New Hotel Seeking Jobs : Employment: Line of applicants long for 800 positions opening at the Hyatt Regency.
About 3,000 people lined up Friday for what counts these days as a cherished prize: a job.
At least as many are expected to come downtown today, between 9 and 5, hoping for a chance at one of 800 jobs opening at the newly constructed Hyatt Regency San Diego.
At 12:30 p.m. Friday, more than 400 people waited in a line that wrapped around an apartment building, then stretched down Pacific Highway for nearly two blocks.
Penni Turner, a security guard for a nearby building, said her husband was 14th in line at 7:45 Friday morning, joining early birds who had spent the night near the tents covering the F Street application center near the hotel, enduring the rain, thunder and lightning. Turner said the crowd Friday was patient, but that some of the older people had trouble standing in line for the 90-minute wait. Looking at the 400 job seekers waiting in line, Turner, who moved to San Diego from Louisiana two years ago, said the job situation was rough there too.
“The chemical plants were all laying people off, and almost everyone had lost their job,” Turner said.
The recent layoffs in the San Diego area will put thousands of people out of work: 1,700 layoffs were announced last week at General Dynamics Convair Division alone.
Cherry Miller waited patiently in line, wearing a professional-looking skirt outfit and a serious expression. She was laid off two years ago from the aerospace division of a local electronics company where she had worked as a material control audit analyst, earning $2,810 a month.
Miller, who lives in Oak Park, says she is still bitter about being laid off; she had worked with the company for 22 years. She said she has started computer training and will apply for work as an administrative assistant, a job that pays much less than half of what she had earned when laid off two years ago.
“I’ll just try to start here (as an assistant) and try to advance myself. But I know I’ll never make that much again before I retire,” the 53-year-old said.
For 47-year-old David Mendez, a job means a future for his family. The couple with their two school-age children live in a one-room apartment several blocks from downtown and barely scrape by with welfare assistance, he said. Mendez said he has spent months asking for work, vainly searching about 150 places for hotel industry jobs since arriving in San Diego last July. His words growing louder and faster, Mendez explained that he moved from a good job in Indiana on an employer’s false promise of work in San Diego.
“We are trying to get back to work,” Mendez said.
Wilhelie Talampas, 33, also said her family is struggling to pay the rent, especially after moving from the Philippines last month when her husband was transferred to San Diego. She explained that her husband’s job with the military brings in too little money to make ends meet.
Talampas said she was surprised to see so many people in line but would wait her turn for the chance of work as a waitress or in housekeeping. She waited 90 minutes with her baby in her arms, and her 6-year-old son quietly standing nearby.
Other people in line were returning to San Diego.
Hurricane Andrew flattened Ron Bennett’s home in Florida, motivating him to return to San Diego where he lives in Pacific Beach. Bennett said his wealthy family lives here, and although his siblings ask money of his parents he chooses to try and make it on his own. But, in his first experience of waiting in line to apply for a job, the 18-year-old Bennett said, “Maybe I should have listened to my brothers and sisters.” Far behind Bennett in line was Mike Malone, a 23-year-old San Diego State University college graduate. Although unemployed, Malone optimistically said he plans to use his fresh public administration degree for what he says is an unusual opportunity. “There’s jobs! There’s openings! They’re hiring!”
But not everyone waiting was unemployed.
Lee Massey, 21, works both a full- and part-time job. But he said risking his life for three years as a $5-an-hour security guard just isn’t worth it. Massey, who lives in Paradise Hills, said he wants to be around for the same dream many other people have: to work enough and earn enough money to live a decent life.
“This (hotel work) isn’t exactly my choice, its kind of a necessity,” Massey said.
And, as some predicted, people now working at local hotels are trying for jobs at the new Hyatt.
Richard Wallace is a Coronado restaurant waiter trying to work at the Hyatt instead. Wallace, 35, who lives in Imperial Beach, said he expects to make more money working as a waiter at the new hotel because of its size and waterfront location.
Workers from the Employment Development Department, who staffed the preliminary screening tables, said probably a quarter of the applicants already have hotel jobs. But, they added, if they are hired here, they leave a vacancy at their old job. The EDD runs a special hospitality industry department, a center for hotels seeking employees and job applicants seeking hospitality work.
After the EDD screening, the applicants were sorted out to the appropriate Hyatt managers.
“We will end up with about 2,000 interviews set up,” said Doug Forseth, general manager of the hotel. “Unfortunately in life, not everyone wins the lottery.”
