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Michael Butler, a veteran in the luxury food &beverage domain with 30+ years of experience across multiple hospitality brands, has started a hospitality support fund for those Indian hospitality workers, who have lost their employment because of the global pandemic.
Understanding the limited support available for the hospitality workers in India whom have had to be laid off because of this global crisis, Butler has decided to start a fund to help hospitality workers living in India to help try and keep them off the poverty line. Michael Butler is asking for support from anyone from across the globe who would like to contribute by donating what they can afford.
When asked about creating a support fund for Indian hospitality workers to which Bulter said, “The idea behind the initiative is to continue to support my personal quest – to aid the hospitality professionals in India thrive and succeed. I have been working on this mission through various personal as well as professional projects during my time as the regional corporate F&B Director for Hyatt India and Europe. India has been very close to my heart for many reasons – I am in awe of the rich heritage and the diversity that this wonderful country possesses and I have been fortunate to have been able to work with great minds in the field of hospitality in India.
“I have seen and read various news articles and guest sentiment reports, I came across one that had mentioned a situation which has forced many restaurants and hotels to close again with the risk of 30% of them being shut permanently. I started then to make my own enquiries asking what and who had been let go by hotels in particular and subsequently asked what was happening to the people who were let go. I could see that the Indian hospitality workers were running out of money which will lead to extreme poverty, I could see only two choices, either choose to be a witness to people being impacted or take some positive action. I then came up with the idea of walking from Zurich to Geneva which is 265 km as I felt I needed to make a statement and doing this journey on foot in a chefs jacket – is a statement for our industry, as many people lose their jobs, businesses close and yet the financial markets have been having all-time highs, which does not make sense to me.
I hope that through this initiative, we can support as many of the Indian hospitality workers who have lost their jobs – I am hoping we can demonstrate that globally we can get through tough times together and show that hospitality is an industry where people can pull together to help others colleagues who are going through tough times.”
The fund has been set up online and the process will entail the requesting employee to submit an email with attachment of their relieving letters from past employers. Preference would be to non-management workers and those who were laid off the earliest. The claims will be validated with local support teams to ensure the most needy and deserving ones get support at the earliest.
Butler has also created the F&B support forum group on LinkedIn where there are hospitality professionals from across the world contributing, collaborating and supporting virtually to help revive and sustain the wonderful F&B industry.
“We will also seek support of the forum members to validate the requests for aid and help generate some funds. The link of the forum is https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8918951/ which has over 12300 hospitality professionals who have been supporting each other through this pandemic and engaging in sharing information,” added Butler.
The fund has been created late June 2020, and Butler will officially launch the fund through a 265 km walk from Zurich to Geneva on 20th of July 2020. This walk is spread across several days ,
where Butler will wear a chef coat to show solidarity and support for the hospitality colleagues.
The status of the fund collection can be seen real time on this link : https://www.gofundme.com/manage/Indian-workers-hospitality-care-fund.
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