A historic year of strikes has been roiling across hotels in one of the biggest travel markets in the US. Starting in July, thousands of Los Angeles-based hotel employees, including cooks, housekeepers, dishwashers, servers, bellhops, and front desk agents, walked off the job to protest their current working conditions, according to Unite Here Local 11, the union that represents most hospitality workers in Los Angeles.
A major focus of the strikes is rolling back pandemic-era policies that cut the number of employees and increased workloads across departments. “I think all of the labor disruption that we’re seeing across our country is born at least in part from the pandemic,” says Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11. “I’ll speak from our industry: The employers can’t resist the temptation to exploit crises like this one. What they ended up doing was essentially having fewer workers doing more work in the hotels.”
At least 46 hotels and counting across LA and Orange counties have gone on strike more than 100 times since the summer, making it the largest hotel worker strike in US history, according to Unite Here.
Among those who are leading the charge? Women hospitality workers. This subset of the labor market faced unprecedented economic hardship during the pandemic, including lower pay, lost medical benefits, and delayed retirement that would possibly take decades to recover from—if they could fully recover at all.
Now women workers are taking control, participating in the workforce in record numbers and leading union organizing. “What we’ve seen is that women, in particular in this prime age group who are 25-54 years old, have really led the labor market recovery following COVID-19,” says Sara Estep, associate director of the Women's Initiative at the Center for American Progress. ("Prime age" is a term economists use to refer to people in the years when they typically produce the most economic output.) “I think it’s interesting to see all of these union wins leading to higher wages in these sectors that are women dominated. More than 50 percent of the leisure and hospitality labor force is [women], and so a lot of these wins are obviously going to benefit women workers.”
The trend rippling through the hospitality industry mirrors that of the larger economy. This year, women across sectors bounced back from the pandemic's so-called “she-cession,” in which women dropped from the workforce en masse due to COVID-19 childcare challenges and the tenuousness of female-dominated industries. “After controlling for demographic changes, we find that those who have contributed most to the rebound in overall labor force participation in April and May of 2023, three years after the nadir of pandemic-era participation, are in fact prime-age women,” says a study from the Brookings Institute, which analyzed data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Those numbers crossed an important threshold in August, when that age bracket of women had a labor force participation rate of 77.8 percent—an all-time high. “This is remarkable, given evidence that the 2020 recession initially widened the labor force participation gap by gender and by parental status,” the Brookings report says. This means women have also gained more clout in unions and across the labor market as a whole.”
Hotel workers' fight for better pay and benefits
In one of the most recent Los Angeles hotel strikes, workers at hotels on Century Boulevard near LAX have been staging an “occupy”-style demonstration, camping out at the properties until management agrees to a fair contract that in part gives workers higher wages to help compensate for their heavier workloads.
Measures such as not bringing back full staff rosters after COVID-19 are affecting labor conditions, but so are lingering policies like making daily room cleaning optional. “That was done at first because none of us were clear what the pandemic was and how it spread,” Petersen says. “Then they decided to convert it to a long-term change, driven not by safety, not by security, but by greed. They want to have fewer workers doing the work, and as a consequence, besides having less jobs and less hours, room attendants have to work twice as hard.”
“Housekeeping is a very difficult job,” says Irene, a housekeeper who has worked for 17 years at the Sheraton Gateway at LAX, and asked to only be referred to by her first name. She’s participating in the campout strike. “The workload is heavy, and it’s a very stressful job as well.”
While her workplace has resumed daily cleanings, they are still understaffed. “They haven’t yet returned to pre-pandemic staffing levels, which is a really big concern right now because we’re taking on work that other people were doing before,” Irene says. One specific problem is not enough employees doing hotel laundry. “For example, sometimes there’s not enough clean linens, so we clean the room, but we have to go find the clean linens then go back to the room. So our work is much longer. We’re often working forced overtime due to the shortage of staff.”
Housekeeping isn't the only area where hotels have cut back. “If you go across the hotels, every single department is down workers,” Petersen says.
For its part, the industry at large says it's trying to hire more employees, but can't find any. “Labor shortages will continue to be one of the main challenges hoteliers face for the foreseeable future,” Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association, told travel industry site Skift after an underwhelming hotel jobs report in November. “Hotels barely added more than 1,000 jobs from October to November, and it’s not for lack of trying. Wages are at near-historic levels, and benefits and flexibility are better than ever before. But a nationwide shortage of workers is preventing hotels from regaining all the jobs we lost to the pandemic.”
Worker frustration, which seems to be present across the industry, could be to blame, especially since hotels received federal bailout money during the pandemic and still cut jobs, according to Unite Here. Labor action has been taking place outside of Los Angeles, too. In Las Vegas, about 40,000 workers in the Culinary and Bartenders Unions across 18 casinos and resorts threatened to strike in November. That walk-off was narrowly avoided when a tentative agreement was reached at the last minute. The strike would have been the largest hospitality worker strike in US history. "The total compensation won by the Culinary Union for workers employed at MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and Wynn Resorts casino properties is approximately $2 billion over the total five year contract," Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer for the Culinary Union, said in a statement.
“Tourism is flourishing,” Petersen says. “Here in LA we’re looking at the World Cup and the Olympics, and development is at a brisk pace for new hotels [as a result]. Profits are up, revenue is up.” Even if hotel occupancy rates are still lower than 2019, he says, “the rates for the rooms are much higher, and so they’re making money."
Meanwhile, many workers' wages are so low, they struggle to find housing within a reasonable distance from their jobs, especially as housing costs have soared recently. “Our members’ wages haven’t kept up with that inflationary jump, so that’s just created the conditions where workers are angry,” Petersen says.
For Irene, commuting is a daily hardship that adds hours onto her workday. “One of the main reasons I’m fighting is for a wage increase,” says Irene, who makes about $19 an hour. “I live in Ontario in San Bernardino County. So I have to wake up at four in the morning to get [to the hotel] by 6a.m. I just can’t afford to live in Los Angeles. And even living in San Bernardino County and paying rent there is a challenge. So the wage increase would allow me to be able to live closer to where I work.”
The hotel workers say they have no plans of letting up until they see improved working conditions. “Our members are more determined than they were on July 1,” Petersen says. Currently, there are still about 13,000 union hospitality workers in the city without a contract. And their demonstrations are continuing. In addition to the hotels near LAX camping out, workers at Le Meridien in Santa Monica recently picketed the lobby and sang Christmas carols. There was also a work stoppage at the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills, where employees have been staging demonstrations since July. “Workers have step by step become more and more certain of what they’re fighting for and more and more powerful," says Petersen. "They exceeded all expectations I certainly had of what was possible."
Tangible results are starting to show across the hospitality sector. As a whole, the industry may have a long way to go, but things are improving. “One bright light is that average hourly wages in this industry have actually grown in real terms since late 2019,” Estep says. According to her analysis, and adjusting for inflation, wages have jumped by about two percent compared to before the pandemic. “I think that’s a great sign for leisure and hospitality workers that we’re seeing wage growth, especially for low-wage workers.”
There's also more opportunity on the horizon that could put hotel workers more in demand. “More than a fifth of the job growth over the next decade is expected to come from leisure and hospitality,” Estep says, citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “So these are all good signs, and the fact that that industry is unionizing at higher rates speaks to the future.”
The future is also on Irene’s mind, and part of why she’s not giving up the fight for better pay. “I have two daughters that still depend on my income,” she says. “That’s a big reason why I’m fighting, and I’m out here camping out as long as it takes in order to make sure the company takes me seriously.”