Almost about 10,000 staff working in hotels that are spread across the United States have embarked on strike using the opportunity of a major holiday weekend to table their grievances on better working conditions and a rise in payments.
These hotel workers left their work in eight popular cities in the U.S, including Boston, Honolulu, San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle, following a failed attempt to come to terms with on contract dialogue between the UNITE HERE union and major hotel chains like Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott.
The International President of the UNITE HERE union, Gwen Mills, said the group embarked on civil disobedience before the coming Labor Day to be observed on Monday because hotels are yet to return back to the status quo prior to the Coronavirus pandemic that hit the world in 2019 despite the rise in profits by the employers.
“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,” Mills said in a statement.
“Many can no longer afford to live in the cities that they welcome guests to, and painful workloads are breaking their bodies. We won’t accept a ‘new normal’ where hotel companies profit by cutting their offerings to guests and abandoning their commitments to workers.”
He also made it known to the public that strikes have been approved in cities like Oakland, Providence, New Haven, and Baltimore, and that the union would take action there anytime soon.
The leader of U.S. labor relations at Hyatt, Michael D’Angelo, is one of those who disagree with UNITE HERE over their strike action as he noted that chain had a cooperation history with union dated to a long time.
The weekend preceding Labor Day is usually a very busy travel time in the United States. Monitoring organization, AA, in their observation noted last month that bookings for the weekend were up to 9%, compared to what was recorded last year.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) says that it expects about 17 million United people to travel during the Labor Day break.