Free Republic

More than 10,000 hotel workers at 24 hotels stretching from Boston to the West Coast to Hawaii went on strike early Sunday morning, disrupting travel during a busy Labor Day weekend. The hotels are reportedly still open but guests will deal with a skeleton staff unable to provide full services. UNITE HERE, the union representing the striking workers, says they are striking not just for better pay but also better working conditions, including the return of automatic daily room cleaning that many hotels dropped during the pandemic. “We’re on strike because the hotel industry has gotten off track,” Gwen Mills,...

... Under an obscure provision of the city's wage hike, unionized hotels were granted an exemption allowing them to pay their employees less... ... a series of loopholes that cut union workers out of the very pay increases their leaders have championed... San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and Santa Monica have all adopted union waivers in their most recent minimum wage laws... At the Sheraton Universal Hotel, a longtime union property, bellhops, waiters and banquet servers make California's current minimum wage: $10 an hour... Those doing the same jobs at a non-union Hilton less than 500 feet away make at...

Los Angeles (AP) -- A Superior Court judge blocked a new law extending the city's "living wage" law to workers at airport-area hotels from taking effect until May at the earliest. Wednesday's ruling came in response to a challenge filed by seven of the 12 hotels that would be required to pay all workers $10.64 an hour including health benefits under a law signed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

About 300 protesters demanding unionization for hotel workers were arrested Thursday in a carefully choreographed, peaceful demonstration that shut down part of a busy thoroughfare near Los Angeles International Airport. The arrests came after months of coordination between national hotel workers' unions, labor leaders, immigrant groups and police, who advised the organizers on how to proceed without endangering public safety. "We hope to get better benefits, like health insurance coverage for our family, better wages, a lighter workload and respect, because right now we are being treated like slaves," said Evelina Alvarez, 55, a Mexican national and housekeeper at the...

After voting "yes" for a strike, Godfrey Maeshiro transferred money from his account at the Sheraton credit union to his checking account. "If we strike, then I won't have to cross the picket line to get funds from the Sheraton credit union," said Maeshiro, a bellman at Sheraton's Princess Kaiulani hotel. "It's like preparing for a hurricane. I will have more peace of mind if I had all the supplies on hand." No strike date has been set. Approximately 80 percent of the 1,500 union workers at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and 2,500 workers at the four Sheraton properties —...