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Diving certificate:
- Hotel workers in San Francisco have voted overwhelmingly to strike this weekend, according to a press release from the hotel union Unite Here, which was obtained by Hotel Dive.
- According to a post on social media platform X, 94% of union members who attended the voted for a strikeEight hotels and around 3,000 employees in the San Francisco market are taking part in the vote.
- The count in San Francisco follows Unite Here unions in other major markets – especially Boston and Honolulu – approved strikes. Votes are still pending in Seattle and the Californian cities of Oakland, San Jose and San Diego.
Diving insight:
Workers who have authorized a strike can call it any time after their contract expires. Hotel workers in San Francisco’s contracts expire later this week, a Unite Here spokesperson told Hotel Dive.
“My job has always been painful, but now it’s even worse,” said Consuelo Escorcia, a lobby worker at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, in a statement. “There used to be six of us cleaning the lobby and public restrooms each shift, but since COVID, it’s down to two or three.”
Marriott did not respond to Hotel Dive’s request for comment.
Across the country, workers are demanding higher wages and safer working conditions in their first collective bargaining negotiations since the pandemic began. Gwen Mills, Unite Here’s newly elected presidentsaid 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 strike, which could affect the entire hotel industry at once,” Mills said 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, each with 5,000 members, voted to strike last week. Smaller chapters in Providence, Rhode Island, and New Haven, Connecticut, were first in this month’s wave of strike votes. both approved the strikes last Wednesday.
And in Baltimore, workers at According to The Baltimore Sun, the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor voted to strike on Friday.
According to Unite Here, more than 40,000 Unite Here employees in the United States and Canada will have their contracts renegotiated this year.
