RLn Staff
Roughly 15,000 housekeepers, cooks and front desk clerks across the region walked off the job over the weekend, demanding higher pay and better benefits. The strike, which started on June 2, coincided with a long July Fourth holiday weekend as thousands of visitors arrived for conventions, weddings and parties.
The strike began Sunday, calling for higher wages, limits on their workloads, and financial help with housing needs where rents are unaffordable. Their labor contract expired June 30.
The union surveyed workers in the area and found more than half have either moved in the past five years or plan to move in the near future because of housing costs.
A coalition of 44 hotels in the area offered a contract giving workers a 10% hourly pay increase in the first 12 months and further increases in subsequent years. By 2027, workers would earn more than $31 an hour, said Keith Grossman, a lawyer representing the group.
The union, UNITE HERE Local 11, is asking hotels for an immediate $5 an hour raise, which amounts to a 20% raise for workers, and more increases in subsequent years. The union also wants hotels to implement a 7% surcharge on guest tabs to create a fund specifically to address workers’ housing needs.
The hotels are against adding a surcharge to help with employee housing, which they call a tax on guests.