More than 50 hotels in Boston, Honolulu, and San Francisco are facing the possibility of a labor stoppage after more than 10,000 members of labor union Unite Here voted almost unanimously to allow for a strike. Union members’ goal: To secure contracts with better financial terms and working conditions than their previous contracts, which were negotiated in the pre-pandemic era.
Hotel employees represented by Unite Here include front-desk workers, guest-room attendants, bell and doorpersons, restaurant servers, bartenders, cooks, and dishwashers.
The strike authorization comes from about 5,000 union workers in Boston across 35 hotels and also from 5,000 union employees in Honolulu across about 10 hotels. The 3,000 union employees in San Francisco across seven hotels will vote sometime before their contract ends on August 14. The brands affected in these cities include Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, and Omni.
In addition, about 350 workers at two of the largest meeting hotels in Providence, R.I., and New Haven, Conn.—the Omni Providence and the Omni New Haven at Yale—also voted to authorize a strike.
The contracts for some of the workers have already expired while others will lapse before year end, according to the union. A strike authorization doesn’t guarantee a walkout, but it means that the union’s negotiating committee has the authority to call a strike in a city at any time.
The strike-vote results could be a sign of things to come in other cities where hotel-labor contract negotiations have stalled, and strike-authorization votes have been called. These include Baltimore, San Diego, and San Jose, Calif.
What’s more, at least 20,000 other hotel workers represented by Unite Here across 13 other U.S. cities are presently negotiating new contracts.
