Strikes start at top hotel chains as housekeepers seek higher wages and daily room cleaning work

With cleaning as many as 17 rooms per shift, Fatima Amahmoud’s job at the Moxy Hotel in downtown Boston sometimes seems impossible.

There was the time she saw three days’ worth of blond dog hair stuck to the curtains, bedspread, and carpet. She knew she wouldn’t be able to finish it in the 30 minutes she was supposed to spend on each room. The dog’s owner had declined daily room cleaning, an option that many hotels have promoted as environmentally friendly but that for them is a way to save on labor costs and deal with the shortage of workers since the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, domestic workers’ union members have been fighting a fierce battle to reinstate the rules. automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, who say they are facing unmanageable workloads, or in many cases reduced hours and declining revenue.

The dispute over daily housekeeping has become a symbol of the frustration over working conditions among hotel workers who lost their jobs for months during pandemic closures and returned to a transformed sector grappling with chronic staff shortages and changing travel trends.

More than 40,000 employees, represented by the UNITE HERE unionare locked in tough contract negotiations with major hotel chains including Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Omni over demands for higher wages and a rollback of COVID-19-era service and staffing cuts. At least 15,000 workers have voted so far to authorize strikes this fall if no agreement is reached after contracts expire at hotels in 12 cities from Honolulu to Boston.

The first strike began Sunday, when more than 1,000 workers walked off the job for three days at four hotels in Boston and one in Greenwich, Connecticut, UNITE HERE said.

The labor unrest serves as a reminder of the disproportionate and ongoing toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken on low-wage women, particularly Black and Hispanic women who are overrepresented in front-facing service jobs. While women have largely returned to the workforce since shouldering the burden of pandemic-era furloughs — or dropping out to take on caregiving responsibilities — that recovery has taken a gap in employment figures between women with and without a university degree.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. hotel industry employs about 1.9 million people, down 196,000 workers from February 2019.

According to the American Hotel And Lodging Association, 80% of member hotels are facing staffing shortages, and 50% cite housekeeping as their top staffing need.

It is a workforce that trusts overwhelmingly in on women of color, many of whom are immigrants, and who UNITE HERE says are older. According to federal statistics, nearly 90 percent of housekeepers in buildings are women.

“We have told the manager many times that it is too much for us,” said Amahmoud, whose hotel is among those where workers have authorized a strike but have not yet walked out.

Gwen Mills, president of UNITE HERE, describes the contract negotiations as part of long lasting struggle to ensure a family income for service providers that is comparable to traditional male-dominated sectors.

“The work in hospitality is generally undervalued and it is no coincidence that it is disproportionately women and people of color who do this work,” Mills said.

The union hopes to build on the recent success in Southern Californiawhere it won significant wage increases, higher employer contributions to pensions and fair workload guarantees in a new contract with 34 hotels after repeated strikes. Under that contract, housekeepers at most hotels will earn $35 an hour by July 2027.

Kevin Carey, the hotel association’s interim president and CEO, says hotels are doing everything they can to attract workers. According to the association’s surveys, 86% of hoteliers have raised wages in the past six months, and many have offered more flexibility with hours or expanded benefits. The association says wages for hotel workers have increased 26% since the pandemic.

“This is a fantastic time to be a hotel worker,” Carey said in an email statement to The Associated Press.

Hotel staff say the reality on the ground is more complicated.

Maria Mata, 61, a housekeeper at the W Hotel in San Francisco, says she makes $2,190 every two weeks when she works full time. But some weeks she’s called in for only one or two days, forcing her to max out her credit cards to pay for food and other expenses for her household, which includes her granddaughter and elderly mother.

“It’s hard to find a new job at my age. I just have to trust that we’re going to work this out,” said Mata, whose hotel has not yet voted to authorize a strike.

Nely Reinante said guests at the Hilton Hawaiian Village often tell her they don’t need their rooms cleaned because they don’t want her to work too hard. She said she takes every opportunity to explain that refusing her services only creates more work for housekeepers.

Sometimes, if a guest refuses, she will offer to simply take out the trash or clean the bathroom.

At least 5,000 workers at seven Honolulu hotels, including the Hilton Hawaiian Village, have voted to strike.

Since the pandemic, UNITE HERE has regained automated daily cleaning of rooms in Honolulu and other cities, either through contract negotiations, filing complaints, or through local government ordinances.

But the issue is back on the table at many hotels where contracts are expiring. Mills said UNITE HERE is pushing for stronger language to make it harder for hotels to quietly encourage guests to opt out of daily housekeeping.

In a statement, Hilton said it is “committed to negotiating in good faith to reach fair and reasonable agreements.” Hyatt said it is “optimistic that mutually beneficial agreements can be reached without strikes.” Marriott and Omni did not respond to requests for comment.

The US hotel industry has recovered from the pandemic despite average occupancy rates remaining below 2019 levels, largely due to higher room rates and record spending per room. Average revenue per available room, a key metric, is expected to hit a record high of $101.84 in 2024, the hotel association said.

David Sherwyn, director of the Cornell University Center for Innovative Hospitality Labor & According to Employment Relations, UNITE HERE is a strong union, but it faces an uphill battle over daily room cleaning. Hotels see cutting back on service as part of a long-term strategy to address rising costs and ongoing labor shortages.

“The hotels say the guests don’t want it, I can’t find the people and it’s a huge expense,” Sherwyn said. “That’s the struggle.”

Workers resent what they see as a strategy to squeeze more out of them while dealing with irregular schedules and low pay. While unionized domestic workers tend to earn higher wages, pay varies widely between cities.

Chandra Anderson, 53, makes $16.20 an hour as a housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore Inner Harbor, where workers have not yet voted to strike. She is hoping for a contract that would raise her hourly wage to $20, but says the company came back with a counteroffer that “felt like a slap in the face.”

Anderson, who has been the sole breadwinner in her household since her husband went on dialysis, said they had to move to a smaller, more affordable home a year ago, partly because she couldn’t get enough hours at work. Things have improved since the hotel reinstated daily room cleaning earlier this year, but she still struggles to afford basic necessities like groceries.

Tracy Lingo, president of UNITE HERE Local 7, said Baltimore members are applying for pensions for the first time, but the biggest priority is to bring hourly wages closer to those in other cities.

“We are so far behind,” Lingo said.

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Associated Press journalist Jennifer Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this story.

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