Dive Brief:
- Hotel workers in San Francisco voted overwhelmingly to authorize strikes over the weekend, according to a release from hospitality union Unite Here obtained by Hotel Dive.
- According to a post on the social media platform X, some 94% of union workers who participated voted to authorize a strike. The vote represents eight hotels and roughly 3,000 workers in the San Francisco market.
- The San Francisco tally comes after Unite Here unions in other major markets — most notably Boston and Honolulu — approved strikes. Votes are still forthcoming in Seattle and the California cities of Oakland, San Jose and San Diego.
Dive Insight:
Workers who have authorized strikes can call them any time after their contracts expire. Contracts expire for San Francisco hotel workers later this week, a Unite Here spokesperson told Hotel Dive.
“My job was always painful, but now it’s even worse,” said Consuelo Escorcia, a lobby attendant at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, in a statement. “They used to staff six of us to clean the lobby and public bathrooms on each shift, but since COVID, we have only two or three.”
Marriott did not respond to a Hotel Dive request for comment.
Across the country, workers are seeking higher wages and safer working conditions in their first contract negotiations since the start of the pandemic. Gwen Mills, Unite Here’s newly elected president, said the votes could lead to “huge, historic” strikes.
“This is the first time in history that hotel workers in so many cities have voted to authorize strikes that could hit the hotel industry all at the same time,” said Mills in a statement. “Hotel workers are preparing for huge, historic potential strikes because we don’t want hotels to become the next airline industry — where guests pay more and get less while workers are left behind.”
Unite Here chapters in Boston and Honolulu with 5,000 members each voted to approve strikes last week. Smaller chapters in Providence, Rhode Island, and New Haven, Connecticut, were the first in this month’s wave of strike votes, with both approving walkouts last Wednesday.
And in Baltimore, workers at the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor voted Friday to approve a strike, according to The Baltimore Sun.
More than 40,000 Unite Here workers in the U.S. and Canada have contracts up for renegotiation this year, according to Unite Here.
