Hotel workers from the Jamaica Bay Inn, represented by UNITE HERE Local 11, at the 63rd annual Marina del Rey Boat Parade joining thousands of community members to celebrate a beloved holiday tradition while also calling for respect and a first union contract! And yes, we had a floating picket line! (See the video…)
In the shadow of the Hollywood Bowl, hotel workers at the Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Hollywood started a picket line at 6 a.m. local time today. The 160-room property, owned by RLJ Lodging Trust and operated by Aimbridge Hospitality, expected high occupancy this weekend for one of the last Hollywood Bowl concerts of the year.
In Philadelphia, workers at the Wyndham Philadelphia Historic District hotel—also owned by RLJ Lodging Trust and operated by Aimbridge—walked off the job earlier today, just ahead of the Thanksgiving travel season.
CONTACT: Rachel Sulkes | [email protected] | 602-327-4084
LOS ANGELES: In the shadow of the Hollywood Bowl, hotel workers at the Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Hollywood started a picket line at 6 AM local time today.
The 160-room hotel, owned by RLJ Lodging Trust and operated by Aimbridge Hospitality, expected high occupancy this weekend for one of the last Hollywood Bowl concerts of the year.
In Philadelphia, workers at the Wyndham Historic District hotel—also owned by RLJ Lodging Trust and operated by Aimbridge—walked off the job earlier today, just ahead of the Thanksgiving travel season.
“Whether we strike is up to the employers and how willing they are to pay us fairly for the work we do,” said Maria Christina Velasquez, a shop steward with UNITE HERE Local 11 and laundry attendant at the Hilton Garden Inn Hollywood since 2019. “We’re ready for anything.”
“Hotel workers like me go on strike to win raises that keep up with the rising cost of living, pensions, high quality union healthcare, and safe workloads,” said Brent Allen, a restaurant server and member of UNITE HERE Local 274 at the Wyndham Historic District since 2023. “We’re going to welcome millions of visitors to Philly in 2026, but most of us can’t pay our basic bills. We deserve to be able to live dignified lives but that can only happen if the hotel owner and operator pay us what we deserve.”
RLJ Lodging Trust (NYSE: RLJ) owns a portfolio of nearly 100 hotels across 23 states and the District of Columbia. The company just this week announced a year-over-year drop in both revenue and net income. According to campaign filings, between July and September of this year, RLJ Lodging Trust contributed $25,000 to the effort to defeat a $30 minimum wage for hospitality workers that the Los Angeles City Council passed in May.
Aimbridge hospitality operates hotels across the world under known brands like Hilton, Hyatt, and Windham. Aimbridge-operated properties were among the last to settle during the 2023–2024 Southern California Hotel Strike, the largest hotel strike in modern U.S. history.
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UNITE HERE Local 11 is more than 32,000 hospitality workers in Southern California and Arizona who work in hotels, restaurants, universities, convention centers, and airports.
UNITE HERE LOCAL 274 is 4,000 private-sector hotel and food service workers at stadiums, universities, cafeterias, and hotels throughout the Philadelphia region.
Both are affiliates of UNITE HERE, a labor union representing 300,000 workers in gaming, hotel, and food service industries in North America.
Los Angeles will become the mega events capital of the world over the next several years. During 2026 through 2028, our city will host—among other events—the FIFA World Cup, the Super Bowl, and the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Such mega events and the massive investments required to make them happen should have a positive impact for the city’s residents, including the workers that make the games possible. But in recent decades, in country after country, global sporting events have failed to produce lasting benefits for host communities.
The Los Angeles County Registrar announced it will conduct a full count of the signatures gathered by the CEO-backed campaign, after completing an initial sample count.
Their failure to qualify outright is due in large part to the unprecedented efforts of workers and community to educate voters and collected signature withdrawals. Thank you to everybody who worked so hard to get us to this point!
A record of more than 120,000 Angelenos submitted forms to revoke their signatures on the referendum petition when they learned the petition would actually upend the Olympic Wage.
We’ll keep you updated when the full results are available in September!
LOS ANGELES: The Defend the Wage LA Coalition, which includes UNITE HERE Local 11, SEIU-United Service Workers West (USWW), and LAANE, is calling on the City Clerk to throw out the referendum to overturn the Olympic Wage based on allegations of the campaign’s brazen deception of voters, violence, and other gross misconduct.
The referendum campaign, funded by Delta, United, and members of the American Hotel and Lodging Association including Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott, misled countless voters by claiming the petition would increase wages, when it would actually overturn a recently-enacted minimum wage increase. Many volunteers have also accused signature gatherers of violence against canvassers seeking to keep the Olympic Wage intact. The referendum signature gatherers even set up shop in Skid Row, allegedly paying cash to unhoused people to register to vote and sign the referendum petition. Delta is an inaugural founding partner of the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics and official airline of Team USA.
A record of more than 115,000 Angelenos have submitted forms to revoke their signatures on the referendum petition when they learned the petition would actually upend the Olympic Wage. Given the evidence of gross misconduct and revocations, the coalition is calling upon the City Clerk to invalidate the petition altogether.
The Defend the Wage LA Coalition has mounted a major public campaign to educate the public about the referendum, report misconduct by its circulators, and assist voters who signed the petition based on false representations about its purpose to revoke their signatures. Hundreds of Angelenos have joined in the effort, calling a 24-hour hotline and responding to thousands of emails and text messages, with tens of thousands signing revocation forms.
“The greed of the airlines and hotels was only outdone by their deceit and desperation. The City Clerk should invalidate the petition,” said Kurt Petersen co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11 and David Huerta president of SEIU-USWW. “They would rather spend millions of dollars deceiving voters than pay workers a living wage and quality healthcare, but we are proving once again that working class solidarity is more powerful than money.”
“When we spoke to our community, they understood us and saw through what the industry was trying to do. Housing affordability is out of reach for so many working families across the region, and their support means the world,” said Maria Rubio, worker at Flying Food Group, an airline catering company that prepares and packages meals for international flights out of LAX.
“Corporations’ attempts to deceive Angelenos into signing the CEOs petition didn’t work because we mobilized, organized, and educated our communities on what was at stake: living wages and healthcare for essential workers. In the end, no matter how many underhanded tactics corporations try to use, we, the essential workers that make LAX and the region’s economy run, will win,” said Jovan Houston, LAX customer service agent and SEIU-USWW executive board member.
“Our coalition, which fought alongside tourism workers for over two years at City Hall, has only grown since we heard that corporations were trying to claw back workers’ hard-won wages and health care,” said Jessica Durrum, Policy Director at LAANE. “It’s been remarkable and inspiring to see so many Angelenos heed the call by volunteering, making calls, and helping to spread the word, all to defend their neighbors’ access to health care and decent wages. We’re hopeful that the City Clerk will do the right thing and invalidate the petition.”
The outrageous activity of signature gatherers has engendered a flurry of complaints. Most recently, this Thursday, UNITE HERE Local 11 submitted extensive evidence to the offices of the City Clerk and the City Attorney to support allegations that circulators for the referendum egregiously misrepresented the content and effect of the referendum petition to voters, committed violence or threats of violence against canvassers seeking to educate the public about its actual content, and committed other serious misconduct. This mountain of evidence demonstrates why the petition should be rejected.
Earlier this week, UNITE HERE Local 11 submitted a complaint to California Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower alleging that the companies collecting signatures for the referendum may have engaged in labor trafficking in violation of California law by inducing some signature gatherers to come to work in Los Angeles from other states by falsely claiming the petition was to increase the minimum wage.
Earlier in June, Local 11 filed a complaint with City Attorney Feldstein Soto and other agencies alleging that paid signature gatherers for the petition have obtained signatures by falsely claiming that the petition would increase workers’ wages. It also alleged that referendum signature-gatherers have repeatedly engaged in violent or threatening behavior. In one case, a witness alleges that he was violently assaulted and punched in the face by a referendum petition circulator.
As a result, Los Angeles City Councilmember Hugo Soto Martinez introduced a motion to call on the Los Angeles Police Department and the City Attorney to investigate the claims, which was subsequently passed by the Economic Development and Jobs Committee.
In addition, over thirty elected officials, including State Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, Senators Maria Elena Durazo and Lola Smallwood Cuevas, Assembly Majority Whip Mark Gonzalez, and Assemblymembers Isaac G. Bryan, Tina McKinnor, Mike Gipson and Avelino Valencia sent a letter and demanded that the companies “stop funding this distortion of the democratic process in Los Angeles.”
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The Defend The Wage LA coalition is composed of UNITE HERE Local 11, SEIU-USWW, and Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE).
Los Angeles, CA: Over thirty elected officials, including State Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez, Senators Maria Elena Durazo and Lola Smallwood Cuevas, Assembly Majority Whip Mark Gonzalez, and Assemblymembers Isaac G. Bryan, Tina McKinnor, Mike Gipson and Avelino Valencia sent a letter today demanding that airline and hotel CEOs stop funding the deceitful campaign to overturn the Olympic Wage passed in the City of Los Angeles for tourism workers.
In the letter addressed to the CEOs of Delta Airlines, United Airlines, the American Hotel and Lodging Association, and AHLA members Hilton and Marriott, elected leaders demanded that the companies “stop funding this distortion of the democratic process in Los Angeles.” Elected officials say they will hold CEOs “accountable for any potential liability for this alleged misconduct and other criminal acts.” The letter was also sent to Attorney General Rob Bonta and Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto.
Over the two years since the Olympic Wage ordinance was introduced, the combined compensation of Delta, United, Hilton, and Marriott’s CEOs reached over $330 million. In just 2024, each of these CEOs’ raises ranged from 155% to over 602% of what they made in 2022. Meanwhile, over the same two years, the minimum wage of tourism workers rose an average of $1.35 an hour.
California State Senator Maria Elena Durazo said, “This attempt to undermine the will of the people and deny hardworking hotel and airport employees a living wage is shameful. These corporations would rather spend millions fighting against fair pay than ensure their workers can afford to live in the city they serve. We will stand with our union brothers and sisters and fight tirelessly to ensure these vital wage increases are implemented, allowing Angelenos to earn enough to support their families and contribute to our local economy.”
The letter follows a complaint filed last week alleging that paid signature gatherers for the petition funded by these companies have falsely claimed that the petition would increase workers’ wages, when the referendum actually seeks to overturn a recently passed minimum wage law. The complaint was filed with the offices of the California Attorney General, Los Angeles District Attorney and Los Angeles City Attorney by the hotel workers’ union, UNITE HERE Local 11. Earlier this week, a motion introduced by Los Angeles City Councilmember Hugo Soto Martinez calling on the Los Angeles Police Department and the City Attorney to investigate the claims passed the Economic Development and Jobs Committee.
The complaint alleges that instead of honestly communicating with the public about the initiative’s purpose of eliminating the new minimum wage, signature gatherers have flagrantly deceived voters to sign the petition by claiming the initiative is to “increase the minimum wage,” turn a “temporary wage increase into a permanent one” and making other false or misleading claims. The complaint alleges that in some cases, signature gatherers were themselves deceived by the initiative organizers into believing the petition was to raise the minimum wage.
The complaint also alleges that some signature gatherers have failed to disclose the initiatives’ top funders in the materials they used to recruit voters to sign. The failure to carry such disclosures violates state and local election law. Lastly, the complaint alleges that referendum signature-gatherers have repeatedly engaged in violent or threatening behavior. In one case, a witness alleges that he was violently assaulted and punched in the face by a referendum petition circulator.
On May 14, following more than two years of deliberations, the Los Angeles City Council enacted, by a 12-3 margin, an ordinance to increase the wages and health benefits provided to hotel and airport workers in the City of Los Angeles. The “L.A. Alliance for Tourism, Jobs and Progress” launched an effort to overturn the minimum wage increase through a referendum. This Alliance has until June 30 to gather at least 92,998 valid signatures from registered voters in Los Angeles to qualify the measure for the June 2026 ballot.
Los Angeles, California. Representatives of the hotel workers’ union, UNITE HERE Local 11, submitted paperwork late Monday with the Los Angeles City Clerk to file two voter initiatives.
The first initiative would boost the citywide minimum wage to $25.00 an hour initially and raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour on July 1, 2028, when the Olympics and Paralympic Games are scheduled to start in Los Angeles.
Last month, the City Council passed an ordinance with similar minimum wage increases for tourism workers, dubbed the Olympic Wage. Major corporations, including United Airlines, Delta Airlines, and hotel chains launched a costly campaign to overturn the law, arguing that all workers—not only tourism workers—should get wage increases. The new initiative proposes to extend the wage increases to workers in all industries across the city.
The second initiative would require voter approval for hotel and event center development projects in which the City grants subsidies, such as tax rebates or below-market prices for city-owned land, to developers. It would also require voter approval for major hotel developments involving 80 or more guest rooms or event center developments adding more than 50,000 square feet or 1,000 seats and require that the City Council make findings that the developments are compatible with and beneficial to the local community.
In addition, the union and its allies have launched massive field efforts to “Defend The Wage LA” and inform the public of misleading signature-gathering efforts in the campaign led by the tourism industry to overturn the Olympic Wage. A complaint filed last week alleges that paid signature-gatherers for a petition funded by Delta Airlines, United Airlines, Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt have falsely claimed that the petition would increase workers’ wages when the referendum actually seeks to overturn the recently passed tourism minimum wage law. The complaint was filed with the offices of the California Attorney General, Los Angeles District Attorney and Los Angeles City Attorney by the hotel workers’ union, UNITE HERE Local 11.
“Tourism corporations often get massive subsidies from taxpayers. But we question whether big companies that find tens of millions to pay their CEOs each year and are now spending millions more to overturn a minimum wage hike for their lowest-paid workers really need these subsidies. At the very least, voters should get a say on whether their tax dollars should be handed over to these corporations,” said Kurt Petersen, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11.
Petersen added: “Since the initiative advances the position proclaimed by these big tourism companies like United, Delta, and hotel owners that all workers need an increase, we expect them to promptly get on board and endorse the new minimum wage initiative.”
