UNION VICTORIES

Workers to Picket at Holdouts Cameo Beverly Hills, Hilton Garden Inn El Segundo and Glendale Hilton

Los Angeles:  After a year of striking and picketing, workers at Hotel Figueroa have won a life-changing contract. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, when food and beverage employees at the hotel’s subcontracted restaurant sought to unionize, the hotel’s food and beverage subcontractor shut down operations and terminated the workers. Under the historic new agreement, the hotel will assume operations of Café Fig and Bar Magnolia and rehire the fired employees.

“It was a long hard fight, but my coworkers and I stuck together. With the support of community and faith leaders we were able to keep going and in the end we got everything we needed,” said Nohelia Rodriguez, a Hotel Figueroa housekeeper for three years. “This new contract is going to change my life and the lives of so many families.”

Workers at unsettled hotels like the Glendale Hilton, Hilton Garden Inn El Segundo, and Cameo Beverly Hills will continue to picket. Also, in the last month as the country’s largest hotel strike approached the one-year mark, more than 1,500 workers at 11 hotels overwhelmingly ratified new contracts.

Hotel workers at 68 hotels have now achieved a standard that is transforming hotel jobs into middle class professional positions. Improvements include:

• $5.00-an-hour raise in the first year of the contract

• 40% to 50% wage increases for non-tipped workers over the 4.5 year term of the agreement

• Room attendants will earn $35.00 an hour by July 1, 2027

• Guaranteed pre-pandemic staffing levels and mandatory daily room cleaning

• One of the nation’s highest pensions for service workers

• 50 pages of improvements, including Juneteenth as a paid holiday, new rights for immigrants and workers impacted by the carceral system

The Hotel Figueroa’s contract will also expire January 15, 2028, before the world turns its attention on Los Angeles for the Olympic Games.

Community members have declared they are ready to risk arrest in solidarity with workers at unsettled hotels like Cameo Beverly Hills, which is operated by Remington, Westin Long Beach, and Glendale Hilton if no deal is reached.