About 10,000 hotel workers have been striking across the United States over one of the country’s busiest travel periods, the Labor Day extended weekend. Lobar Day is celebrated on the first Monday of September and strikes, lasting from one to three days, started on Sunday.
Workers from 24 hotels, including Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott, in cities across the country have joined picket lines over the past few days. Strikes have concluded in Baltimore and Seattle, but remain in place in Boston, Greenwich, Honolulu, Kauai, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose.
Yesterday, the Unite Here union, which represents workers in hotels, casinos, and airports across the United States and Canada, was counting 9,376 people on strike, with the largest numbers in Honolulu and San Francisco, with, respectively, 5,000 and 2,080 employees on strike.
Similar strikes in the aviation industry over the past two year, hotel workers are calling for higher wages, fair staffing and workloads, and the reversal of Covid-era cuts. They say their wages are not enough to cover the cost of living and many have to work two jobs to make ends meet.
“Since Covid, they’re expecting us to give five-star service with three-star staff”, said Elena Duran, a server at Marriott’s Palace Hotel, a Luxury Collection Hotel, in San Francisco for 33 years. “A couple weeks ago, we were at 98% occupancy, but they only put three servers when we used to be a team of four or five. It’s too much pressure on us to go faster and faster instead of calling in more people to work.”
The union says that many hotels took advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to cut staffing and guest services that were never restored, causing workers to lose jobs and income – and creating painful working conditions for those who carry the increased workload. Unite Here argues that room rates are at record highs and the US hotel industry made over $100 billion in gross operating profit in 2022, but hotel staffing per occupied room was down 13% from 2019 to 2022.
“Ten thousand hotel workers across the U.S. are on strike because the hotel industry has gotten off track”, said Gwen Mills, International President of Unite Here. “Too many hotels still haven’t restored standard services that guests deserve, like automatic daily housekeeping and room service. Workers aren’t making enough to support their families. Many can no longer afford to live in the cities that they welcome guests to, and painful workloads are breaking their bodies. We won’t accept a ‘new normal’ where hotel companies profit by cutting their offerings to guests and abandoning their commitments to workers.”
The union is hoping to achieve similar results to the deals it obtained last year after rolling strikes at Los Angeles hotels and a 47-day strike at Detroit casinos. The actions resulted in “significant wage hikes, increased employer contributions to pensions and fair workload guarantees in a new contract with 34 hotels”, according to Le Monde.
In their turn, hotels are saying not only they are open to negotiations, but also that some of the services the workers want to bring back, like daily room cleaning, are simply not desired by guests anymore.
“Hyatt remains willing to negotiate (…) fair contracts and recognize the contributions of Hyatt employees”, said Michael D’Angelo, the head of labour relations for Hyatt in the Americas, while a Hilton spokesperson also said the hotels remain “committed to negotiating in good faith to reach fair and reasonable agreements that are beneficial to both our valued team members and to our hotels.” There has been no comment from Marriott.
