HONOLULU—A hotel workers strike over low pay and corporate exploitation is spreading across the nation, with workers in Providence, R.I., about to join colleagues in major hotels from Boston to Honolulu in three-day walkouts.
The strike covers hotels employing more than 10,000 workers, half of them at seven Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott hotels in Honolulu. There, it has the most impact, as tourism is either the largest sector or the third-largest sector of the Hawaiian economy, according to various sources.
Another five of the hotels are in San Francisco, where 2,080 workers had to walk. At least three are clustered around the city’s historic Union Square.
Most of the strikers walked the day before Labor Day. Workers in Rhode Island, who previously authorized a strike—just a month after they unionized—have yet to take a hike, Unite HERE Local 26 reported.
That local also represents 938 workers striking four Boston hotels, including the Copley Plaza downtown and Hiltons at Park Plaza and Logan Airport. Their walkout began September 1, as did the walkouts in Seattle, San Jose, San Francisco, Kauai, Hawaii, and Greenwich, Conn.
The workers at Baltimore’s Hilton Inner Harbor Hotel—the hostelry visiting baseball and pro football teams use—walked out on Labor Day.
“We’re on strike because the hotel industry has gotten off track,” Unite HERE President Gwen Mills said. “During Covid (the coronavirus), everyone suffered, but now the hotel industry is making record profits while workers and guests are left behind.
“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.
Won’t accept so called new normal
“We won’t accept a ‘new normal’ where hotel companies profit by cutting their offerings to guests and abandoning their commitments to workers.”
Individual workers told the union about how the hotels, despite bouncing back with record industry-wide revenues after reopening following the massive Covid closures, haven’t hired workers back.
Instead, they’ve cut services and loaded more tasks onto fewer workers—all without raising pay.
“I’m on strike because I need higher wages. I currently have two jobs, and I work about 65 hours a week,” Daniela Campusano, a housekeeper at Hilton’s Hampton Inn & Homewood Suites Boston Seaport for 12 years, told Harvard University’s On Labor blog.
“Everything is so expensive now. All my monthly bills have increased, and I need to earn more money so I can help my daughter pay for her studies. One job should be enough.”
Rebeca Laroque, a housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency Greenwich, told much the same story: “I work so hard and come home exhausted at the end of the day, but I still don’t make enough money to pay my bills. Going on strike is a huge sacrifice, but it’s something I have to do because I need a better life for me and my two kids.”
Unite HERE points out “hotel room rates are at record highs and the hotel industry had made over $100 billion in gross operating profit in 2022. But hotel staffing per occupied room was down 13% from 2019 to 2022 as many hotels maintained Covid-era cuts, including understaffing, ending automatic daily housekeeping, and removing food and beverage options.”
The actual 2022 figures, according to the industry tracker STR, were $239.7 billion in revenues, $101.3 billion in gross profits, $74.8 billion net profits after taxes and depreciation, and $70.9 billion in labor costs.
Full-time hotel workers in Providence, R.I., said earlier this year they must earn at least $26 an hour by 2028 to make ends meet. Room attendants there also demand safer workloads and adequate staffing and supplies. Their contract expired in January and bargaining has been fruitless since.
“What’s most important for me is a significant raise,” George Cook, a 25-year banquet house worker at the Omni Providence, told local freelance writer Steve Ahlquist. “My rent has gone up $500 in the last two years. Most of my paycheck goes towards my rent, so it’s tougher for me to buy things at the store.”
Unite HERE did not want to leave travelers stranded, though. It posted a hotel trackers’ guide on its website, www.unitehere.org, listing both the struck hotels, and unionized alternatives to them.
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