Nearly 2,000 unionized employees—mostly housekeepers, front-desk agents, cooks, dishwashers, F&B servers, bartenders, bellhops, and door staff—walked off the job at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu on September 24. The 2,860-room property is the largest hotel in Hawaii and the largest Hilton in the world. 

The labor action is just the latest in a series of temporary and ongoing walkouts conducted across at least 10 cities by members of national hospitality-labor union UNITE HERE. 

In each instance, workers are calling for higher wages as well as eased workloads through a reversal of COVID-era cuts by hotel management. In some instances, employees have stayed out of work for three days at a time to protest the lack of a new contract with brands in the Hilton, Hyatt, Omni, and Marriott portfolios. In other cases, including in San Diego and San Francisco—and now Honolulu—workers have vowed to not return to work until a new contract is finalized. 

For instance, more than 10,000 hotel workers walked out of hotels in several cities for three days in early September, followed in mid-September by another wave of UNITE HERE members working at hotels in other cities. As of end of day September 24, none of the contract negotiations in any city have come to fruition, and strikes are authorized to begin at any time at hotels in Baltimore; Boston; Honolulu; Kauai; New Haven, Conn.; Seattle; and five California destinations: Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and San Mateo County. 

According to this article on BeatOfHawaii.com, the Hilton Hawaiian Village as well as Moana Surfrider and Sheraton Waikiki—both part of Marriott’s portfolio and which endured a three-day strike earlier this month—“worked to minimize disruptions by enacting contingency plans, though the results have been mixed. Some hotels assured guests that operations would continue, but many services were scaled back. In some cases, non-union staff and outside contractors were deployed.” 

This article was originally published in our sister publication, MeetingsNet.

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