With more than 10,000 workers going on strike from 25 hotels in nine cities over the Labor Day weekend, officials with Unite Here say they're hoping to send the message that hotel workers deserve to benefit more from growing revenues across the industry.
The union, which represents roughly 300,000 workers across various hospitality industries in the U.S. and Canada including roughly 100,000 in hotels, had workers walk off jobs in cities such as Baltimore, Boston, Greenwich, Honolulu, Kauai, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and Seattle during the weekend. Workers remain on strike in San Diego and more strikes are expected in Oakland, Providence and possibly Sacramento depending on the results of an upcoming strike authorization vote in that city.
Speaking on the latest episode of the Hotel News Now podcast, Cade Watanabe, president of Unite Here Local 5 in Hawaii and co-chair of the ongoing national campaign, said a willingness to take better care of workers is vital to "save our industry."
"The basis of our campaign has really been about not just making sure we have the economic improvements and wages to be able to live in the cities that we welcome our guests to, but also to provide the service, too," he said. "We're in the business of hospitality. We want to be able to do that. And part of being able to do that is we need the property staffing. We need workload concerns being addressed. We want to make sure that not only are workers like ourselves respected by this large industry that made over $100 billion in 2022, but also that our guests get what they pay for as well."
Watanabe said the strikes on Labor Day were the culmination of a campaign that launched earlier in the year, specifically on May 1, which coincides with International Workers Day.
Workers across those markets are pushing for pay increases along with specific contract language limiting their workloads and the reversal of pandemic-era cuts to amenities such as daily housekeeping, he said.
The Labor Day strikes are an acceleration of already historic level of labor activity across the hotel industry, which also saw significant strikes during contract negotiations in Los Angeles and Las Vegas in recent years.
Watanabe said a recent strike in Hawaii involved more than 5,000 workers from eight hotels, which he called "the largest mobilization of our hotel workers in over 30 years." He added the biggest impetus for those workers' frustrations is over being ill-equipped to provide "high-quality service," and cost of living and housing increases far outstripping pay in the industry.
"In Hawaii, tourism is the most important industry, and if our No. 1 industry isn't able to provide good, long-term jobs for our local community, then the question really is, why should the community and why should our local people in every one of our cities support tourism?" he said.
Asked whether hotel investors should shoulder the burden of increased cost of living and housing issues, Watanabe said the union isn't "asking our hotel operators to solve our social problems that exist in every one of our markets."
"What we are asking them is to meet us more than halfway or meet us halfway and step up to the plate and help us deliver the product that they so much depend on and they market," he said. "We want to do this work. We love our jobs. We love our guests. We need the tools, and part of those tools are the proper staffing to be able to provide that high quality of service that we believe our guests want when they save up and stay at one of our hotels anywhere across the country."
For more from Hotel News Now's interview with Cade Watanabe, listen to the podcast above, and subscribe to the Hotel News Now podcast wherever you find podcasts.