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September 24, 2024
Hotel workers carry out three-day rolling strikes beginning Labor Day weekend and continuing today
By Tim Hall, Detroit Workers’ Voice
Over 10, 000 hotel workers across the U.S. conducted three-day strikes at 25 hotels over the Labor Day holiday weekend. 5000 of the strikers are in Honolulu. Strikes were also held in Los Angeles, Kauai, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, Boston, Baltimore, New Haven, Oakland, Providence, Greenwich and elsewhere.
New hotel strikes are occurring in some places, including Boston and San Francisco. 1200 Boston area hotel workers just went out on strike on September 19, after voting 99% to do so. They had also been on strike along with the mostly west coast strikers on Labor Day weekend. 2500 Boston-area hotel workers have been on strike during this recent period, but these strikes have not resulted in contracts. these are all organized by the UNITE HERE union so they are presumably limited duration strikes. (1)
Most of these are rolling strikes, lasting three days each. Workers at one hotel in San Diego remained on strike after the Labor Day holiday. This strike was continuing recently.
The strikes are organized by the UNITE HERE union.
The strikes were provoked by hotel management's attempt to squeeze higher profits out of the workers by not returning to pre-pandemic conditions that were better for the workers. The pandemic is over and the hotel capitalists' profits are soaring, but more and more hotel workers are finding it impossible to live on their wages. Many cannot even afford to live in the cities where their jobs are located.
One of the main issues, besides pay and overwork, is that management has eliminated daily house-cleaning of the customers' rooms. This hurts the customers while it requires much more labor from the workers, who now clean rooms that have spent a few days getting dirty. In addition, it also requires 39% less workers, the union says. The workers are demanding a return to daily house-cleaning.
The Labor Day strikes at all but the San Diego hotel were held in groups of workers, each group striking for three days. This is a limited-duration strike tactic, common in Europe but not much used by the labor bureaucracy in the U.S. UNITE HERE has used this tactic in several wide hotel strikes in recent years.
The labor bureaucrats tout the tactic, saying it allows the workers to strike while losing less pay. Limited-duration strikes may be a way to mobilize workers who are not fully committed to striking, to get them into motion and hit a certain blow against management. But such strikes are also less effective than the ordinary strike that lasts until a contract is reached. It took a year for UNITE HERE to reach a contract with the southern California hotels it struck with limited duration tactics last year. That meant, of course, that for a whole year after the end of the limited strikes management was able to squeeze out extra profits from the workers that would have been eliminated had the contract been settled promptly. At present, the recent strikes have not yet resulted in tentative contracts. (2)
But commitment to strike was not an issue at these hotels on Labor Day weekend. The workers had voted by over 90% to strike, so limited tactics were not needed to get the workers to commit to strike. It was the timidity of the labor leaders that led to the limited length, and also the limited number, of the hotel strikes. The leadership of UNITE HERE were reluctant to strike; the workers were not.
Labor bureaucrats are always looking for ways to strike less or for shorter times or not to strike at all.. In the case of these Labor Day actions, workers at 65 hotels had voted to partake in strikes, but UNITE HERE only called out workers at 25 hotels. That was a nice bundle of extra holiday cash for the management of the remaining, un-struck 40 hotels!
This labor bureaucrat trick is widely used. Shawn Fain, the new UAW leader who led last September's auto strike, called out only part of the auto workforce to go on strike and sent them all back to work before they had voted on the tentative contract. The strength of the auto workers' unity resulted in improvements, but the gains could have been greater with a full strike, which would have been shorter also.
Some observers believe that such things are minor matters. But when your own energy and lifeblood is at stake, plus the support of your families, workers do not take such matters lightly. U.S. workers continue to challenge the capitalist bosses, while the labor leaders continually act to blunt the force of the workers' fight.
The San Diego strike was continuing only a few days ago. The workers got a resolution of support from the San Diego city council but no contract as of September 18. (3)
Notes
- 7 News, “Workers on strike at 4 more Boston hotels”, by State House News Service, September 19, 2024, https://whdh.com/news/workers-on-strike-at-4-more-boston-hotels/.
- CNN. Chris Isidore, September 4, 2024, "Most striking hotel workers are back on the job, but the strike continues in San Diego", https://www.aol.com/finance/most-striking-hotel-workers-back-193203359.html .
- KPBS, San Diego City Council throws support behind striking Hilton Bayfront hotel workers, by John Carroll, September 18, 2024, https://www.kpbs.org/news/quality-of-life/2024/09/18/san-diego-city-council-throws-support-behind-striking-hilton-bayfront-hotel-workers .