Former First Lady of California, Maria Shriver decided to stick up for the beleaguered housekeeping staff at the nation’s hotels…by launching a campaign encouraging hotel patrons to tip housekeeping. The campaign is called “The Envelope, Please.”

Of course you should tip! But it’s hardly a prescription for economic justice.

The pro-tip campaign seems especially tone deaf at a time when hotel workers in Los Angeles are gearing up to fight for a $15/hr living wage. 

Barbara Ehrenreich of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project takes Shriver to task for her tepid attempt to help the help:

But she chose to take a strangely sideways, almost timid, approach. Instead of getting the hotel’s CEO on the phone and inquiring politely why housekeepers aren’t paid a living wage – which is something that I imagine a centi-millionaire world-class celebrity could easily do – she launched a campaign to get hotels to encourage their guests to leave tips in their rooms. All the hotel has to do is place an appropriately labeled “gratitude envelope” on the bedside table. The initiative, called “The Envelope Please,” drew immediate support from the Marriott hotel chain, which employs about 20,000 housekeepers in North America.

A little solidarity from a woman of Shriver’s wealth and influence would go a lot farther than a guilt trip for freeloading hotel guests.

[Photo Credit: Kevin Dooley, Creative Commons.]