A Closer Look At The Strategy Behind SoCal Hotel Workers Waves Of Strikes

A second wave of thousands of unionized hotel workers walked off the job earlier this week. Workers from 60 hotels in L.A. and Orange counties are demanding:

• An immediate $5 an hourly pay bump and raises totaling $11 over three years.
• Additional requests include a housing fund, affordable healthcare and manageable staffing workloads.

On Monday of this week, walkouts affected hotels near LAX. That came after a three-day strike that targeted hotels in downtown L.A, Hollywood, Santa Monica and Orange County during the Fourth of July week.

LAist recently spoke with Kent Wong, who directs UCLA’s Labor Center. The center aims to unite workers, students, faculty and policymakers to “address the most critical issues facing working people today.”

This conversation with Julia Paskin for LAist 89.3's All Things Considered show has been condensed for clarity:

Can you recap some of the underlying drivers of the strike? 

Kent Wong: This is a very significant strike. One of the largest among hotel workers in history. Over 15,000 workers are impacted in a mainstay of the Southern California economy. Southern California relies heavily on tourism and on the hotel industry. The disruption in the height of tourism season is very challenging.

And so during the pandemic, hotel workers took a huge hit. There was massive layoffs, unemployment and now that the industry is rebounding and now that workers are heavily engaged on the job, there is a demand to increase wages and benefits within this very profitable industry.”

Staffing levels were seriously reduced during the pandemic because people were not traveling. But now travel has rebounded. Have staffing levels come back to equal that demand?

Kent Wong: Staffing levels unfortunately, have not come back to equal the demand. And so as a consequence, many of the hotel workers are working harder than ever. They're cleaning more rooms, they're servicing more customers and clients than in the past. And so this has been a source of displeasure among the hotel workers who have seen essentially a speed up on the job, but have not seen an increase in their salaries.

So we're dealing with more than 60 hotels that had contracts expire at the end of June, but the hotels are not all walking out at once and staying out. Instead, Unite Here Local 11 is doing these rolling strikes. Can you help explain this strategy instead of just walking out and staying out?

Kent Wong: The whole point of a strike is to withhold the labor of the workforce in order to cause disruption. That's what a strike is about — to show that workers are critical to this industry and to withhold labor means that it makes the employers scramble to try to find ways to keep their businesses open. By having a rolling strike, it really keeps the employers off guard because if they know in advance that they're going to have to try to recruit strikebreakers, then they will do so. If they don't know in advance, then, it makes the challenge of hiring strikebreakers that much more difficult.

This is one of those cases where the union is bargaining with a group that represents dozens of hotel owners. How does that affect negotiations as opposed to just bargaining with one owner?

Kent Wong: In many ways, it maximizes the strength of the hotel workers because you don't have a situation where you're going one at a time with individual employers. Interestingly, one of the major employers, the Westin Bonaventure has settled. So that actually provides a window of hope into the future to see if other hotels might be able to match the offer of the Westin Bonaventure. But by having an industry-wide strike, it maximizes the collective pressure of the hotel workers to demand changes industry-wide.

What do you expect to happen from here? Do you have any idea how long the strike will continue on for?

Kent Wong: This is the height of tourism season. The Southern California economy is heavily reliant on tourism, one of the largest industries in Southern California. And this is a time when the hotel workers have shown tremendous resolve, tremendous internal unity, and I do think that the pressure is now on the hotel employers to respond.