LOS ANGELES — More than 200 hotel workers, members of UNITE HERE Local 11, and their supporters held a press conference on the steps of the InterContinental Hotel here March 25 to celebrate their victory after ratifying the contracts the union signed with 34 hotels. Workers voted them up by 98%.
The contracts include a raise of $5 an hour in the first year, and $10 an hour over the course of the contract, which expires in 2028. Kurt Petersen, co-president of Local 11, told the press, “This is a struggle over the most urgent question facing the city — who will be able to live and work in Los Angeles. We demanded that hotels must help end the housing crisis by paying a living wage.”
He said the $5 per hour raise meant nearly $10,000 a year for union members. Under the new contract, room attendants will earn about $35 an hour by 2027 and workers won increased company contributions for health care and pensions. They also won an end to the bosses’ use of E-Verify, a government program designed to deny jobs to workers without papers. The hotels also agreed to restore working conditions that were cut back during the pandemic, including staffing levels and daily room cleaning.
Several hotel workers spoke at the press conference. “Low wages and high rent forced me out of L.A., but this doesn’t have to keep happening,” Brenda Mendoza, a uniform attendant at the downtown JW Marriott for 14 years, said. She described how this meant she had to get by on only four hours of sleep a night. “The wage raise will give me peace of mind. It means I don’t have to put in extra hours to make ends meet. It means that I won’t have to live paycheck to paycheck.”
Arturo Hueso, a housekeeper at the Fairmont Miramar in Santa Monica for 30 years, told the press that workers will keep showing up to protests to support workers at hotels who are still fighting to win contracts. “We will not give up,” he said.
More than two dozen hotels are still holding out. Petersen said some are negotiating and others still refuse to talk. “They are already defeated, it is time to sign,” he said.
The unionists marched to the nearby Hotel Figueroa behind a banner that read, “Not over yet.” The Figueroa is one of the hotels that hasn’t settled, and recently laid off 100 restaurant workers who had signed cards to unionize.