Big hotel chains hit with Labor Day weekend strike

By Ed Childs and Otis Grotewohl

Represented by UNITE HERE, more than 10,000 hotel workers went on strike in cities across the U.S. on Labor Day weekend. The entire hotel work force — from those in the kitchens and reception to workers who are the backbone of the hotels, the room attendants — at 25 Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton hotels walked out on Sept. 1 for three days. Highlighting rallies were held on Sept. 2, Labor Day Monday.

Union members at 65 hotels voted to authorize a strike, and UNITE HERE strategically organized rolling strikes at specific hotels. The cities where hotel workers carried out labor actions were Baltimore; Boston; Honolulu and Kauai, Hawaii; San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose, California; Seattle; and Greenwich, Connecticut.

Workers at all but one hotel were back at work by Sept. 4. Roughly 700 members of UNITE HERE Local 30 in San Diego have decided to stay out until their contract is settled.  These workers claim that their employer, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, “flat out refused to counter” the union’s proposals on “bringing wages in line with our cost of living in San Diego.” (hoteldive.com, Sept. 4)

Workers at the other 24 hotels conducted their walkouts for one to three days as limited duration strikes. Unfortunately, no contract was signed, and the union asserts the labor dispute is ongoing. Strikes could still be called in cities where they’ve been authorized, but have not yet occurred, such as New Haven, Connecticut; Oakland, California; and Providence, Rhode Island.

The work stoppages are a result of unresolved contract negotiations. Hotel workers are demanding higher wages, fairer staffing levels and the ability to provide daily cleaning services. The latter issue inconveniences guests and it requires more work to clean rooms which have gone for days without being serviced.

Gwen Mills, international president of UNITE HERE said in a statement: “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.” (travelweekly.com, Sept. 5)

New tactics in a new era

Limited duration strikes, also known as “intermittent strikes,” have not been widely used until recently by the U.S. labor movement, but they have been frequent in other countries for years. These strikes are now fairly common among U.S. labor unions that represent health care workers.

Rolling strikes are also a fairly new concept in the U.S. labor movement. Rolling strikes target certain work sites; they are called at the last minute, making it difficult for the employer to hire scabs. The United Auto Workers utilized the rolling strike strategy last year in its open-ended strike against Ford, General Motors and Stellantis that won significant contract gains.

Apart from the ongoing walkout in San Diego, UNITE HERE utilized both limited duration and rolling strikes on Labor Day weekend. The union workers flexed their collective muscle the best way they could in proper response to their current material conditions.

‘New forms of struggle are necessary’

In his book “High Tech, Low Pay,” Workers World Party co-founder and chair Sam Marcy wrote about workers adopting new strategies to fight the boss, while also adapting to dialectical changes.  In chapter nine,  he wrote: “New forms of struggle are necessary to meet the growing challenge and menace of the bosses. It’s to be remembered that all great social movements in the history of the working class have first arisen from below. 

“None ever came from labor consultants, bourgeois academic professionals or capitalist politicians. What’s most important in all this is to recognize that the technological revolution has put the workers and their unions in a great crisis and is shaking them out of the old historic mold of labor relations in which they have been trapped.

“The vast transformation which the structural framework of capitalist industry is undergoing makes new forms of struggle absolutely indispensable or the workers must become captives of management altogether. These new forms of struggle are an outgrowth and development of the older forms and an advance upon them.” 

Read a free download of “High Tech, Low Pay” at workers.org/books.

Ed Childs is a retired UNITE HERE Local 26 chief steward who represented dining hall workers at Harvard University.