Thousands of Southern California hotel workers quit their jobs Sunday, demanding higher wages and better benefits in what the union called the largest strike in its history.
Chefs, room attendants, dishwashers, servers, bellboys, and hotel front desk agents were meeting outside of the big hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties just as summer tourist numbers increased.
Last month, members Unite Here Local 11 96% voted in favor of permission to strike. The union seeks better wages, better health care benefits, higher pension contributions, and less onerous workloads.
In addition, the union wants to create a “Hospitality Workforce Housing Fund” to help workers deal with the high cost of living in Greater Los Angeles. Many employees report commuting hours because they cannot live near their job.
“First our members were devastated by the pandemic, and now by the greed of their bosses,” union co-chair Kurt Petersen said in a statement. “The industry got bailouts while we got cutbacks.”
Contracts expired at midnight Friday at more than 60 hotels, including properties owned by major chains like Marriott and Hilton. The strike affects about half of the 32,000 hospitality workers across Southern California and Arizona.
Last week, a deal was reached with the largest employer, the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites in downtown Los Angeles, which employs more than 600 unionized workers. Union officials called the initial agreement, which provided for higher wages and higher levels of employment, a huge win for workers.
Talks with other hotels were deadlocked. A coalition of more than 40 hoteliers involved in the talks accused union leaders of canceling a scheduled bargaining session and refusing to come to the negotiating table. The group said hotels offered pay increases of $2.50 an hour in the first 12 months and $6.25 over four years.
“From the outset, the union has shown no desire to enter into fruitful and good faith negotiations with this group,” the hotel alliance said in a statement on Sunday. “The union has not budged from its inaugural request two months ago of up to a 40% increase in wages and a 28% increase in benefit costs.”
The outage was expected, said Keith Grossman, a spokesperson for the Coalition, and the property “is fully prepared to continue operating these hotels and taking care of our guests for as long as this disruption continues.”
