Hotels employees walk a picket line on Sunday, July 2, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. 1000’s of employees at hotels across Southern California walked off the job early Sunday demanding higher pay and higher advantages, starting what could possibly be the biggest U.S. hotel employees’ strike in recent memory.(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Genaro Molina | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
Just because the July Fourth holiday weekend gets into high gear, hundreds of hotel employees in Southern California began striking Sunday morning searching for to barter a contract with higher wages and other advantages, in line with the union representing the employees.
Members of UNITE HERE Local 11, which says it represents greater than 32,000 hospitality employees in Southern California and Arizona, are striking at greater than a dozen hotels throughout Los Angeles and Santa Monica after their contract expired just after midnight, in line with posts on the union’s Twitter page.
Participants include cooks, dishwashers, servers, front desk employees and room attendants, the union said in a news release. A union representative said Friday that the contract covered about 15,000 employees at 65 hotels.
The union’s key demands include a $5-an-hour wage increase, access to reasonably priced family health care advantages and stronger workplace protections.
A spokesperson for the union couldn’t immediately be reached Sunday to supply more specific details.
Negotiations began April 20, the local said. Last month, 96% of UNITE HERE Local 11 members voted to authorize the strike.
Hotels employees walk a picket line on Sunday, July 2, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA. 1000’s of employees at hotels across Southern California walked off the job early Sunday demanding higher pay and higher advantages, starting what could possibly be the biggest U.S. hotel employees’ strike in recent memory.(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Mario Tama | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The union also says that while hotels received billions in federal bailouts through the pandemic and have since bounced back and exceeded pre-pandemic profits, wages haven’t kept up with rising housing costs. Inexpensive housing advocates have said skyrocketing rents are fueling homelessness throughout California, where nearly 1 million fewer reasonably priced rental homes can be found for very low-income renters, in line with the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
The union has also said plans for Los Angeles to host the soccer World Cup in 2026 and the Summer Olympics in 2028 could worsen the housing crisis.
In a press release, Kurt Petersen, a co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11, said it was “shameful” that “the hotel negotiators decided to take a four-day holiday as an alternative of negotiating.”
The Hotel Association of Los Angeles said in a press release Thursday that hotel management representatives had been “actively engaged in good faith collective bargaining” with the union.
“The hotel community will proceed to supply excellent service in welcoming guests to the Los Angeles area as we at all times do,” it added.
And attorneys Keith Grossman and Ken Ballard said in a press release released Friday on behalf of the Coordinated Bargaining Group — the 44 Los Angeles County and Orange County hotels involved within the negotiations — that the union “has shown no desire to interact in productive, good faith negotiations with this group.”
The statement also said the Coordinated Bargaining Group proposed wage increases of $2.50 per hour in the primary 12 months, rising to a $6.25 hourly increase over the subsequent 4 years.
The strike comes days after the Westin Bonaventure, town’s biggest hotel, got here to an agreement affecting its 600 employees, who will receive increased wages and pension contributions, amongst other advantages, the union said.
It is usually happening through the Anime Expo, a four-day event focused on Japanese popular culture going down on the Los Angeles Convention Center that pulls 100,000 people from world wide, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The strike also comes amid the ongoing Hollywood writers’ strike. And the Screen Actors Guild, which represents a few of Hollywood’s biggest stars, agreed to increase its contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to July 12 to avert a strike.