Hotel Workers Strike
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This hasn’t gotten enough news, but the largest hotel worker strike in American history is currently going on in Los Angeles.
Thousands of hotel workers in Southern California walked off the job on Sunday demanding higher pay and better benefits, just as hordes of tourists descended on the region for the Fourth of July holiday.
“Workers have been pent up and frustrated and angry about what’s happened during the pandemic combined with the inability to pay their rent and stay in Los Angeles,” said Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, the union representing the workers. “So people feel liberated, it’s Fourth of July, freedom is reigning in Los Angeles and hotel workers are leading that fight.”
Representatives for the hotels have said that the union had not been bargaining in good faith, and that leaders were determined to disrupt operations.
“The hotels want to continue to provide strong wages, affordable quality family health care and a pension,” Keith Grossman, a spokesman for the coordinated bargaining group consisting of more than 40 Los Angeles and Orange County hotels, said in a statement.
It’s fascinating to me that Los Angeles, once the most anti-union city in the nation, probably now has the nation’s most militant labor movement. I will have more out about this strike soon.