Baltimore Hilton Hotel workers launch one-day strike on Labor Day

More than 200 Hilton hotel workers in Baltimore went on strike Monday for one day — the most recent salvo in an escalating conflict over wages and working conditions at the city-owned hotel.

The Labor Day action could be a precursor to a more sustained work stoppage. Union leaders said the walk-out is aimed at pressuring hotel management to budge on its employees’ demands.

Some 40,000 hotel workers represented by the UNITE HERE union are renegotiating contracts this year in more than 20 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

The strike in Baltimore involves members of UNITE HERE Local 7 and follows 10 months of negotiations that so far have failed to produce an agreement. It is one of a series of walk-outs in eight other cities: Boston, Greenwich, Honolulu, Kauai, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, and Seattle.

Union president Tracy Lingo said Monday that she thinks the strike has the potential to get results at the bargaining table, similar to the movement she saw from the company after workers voted Aug. 9 to authorize a strike.

“We are fighting for our economic lives,” she said. “There’s been progress on wages, but there’s still too big a gap between Baltimore and neighboring cities.”

Though Baltimore City owns the hotel, the Virginia-based Hilton Hotel chain has a contract to manage the facility at 401 W. Pratt St. Hotel workers are Hilton employees and receive their paychecks from Hilton.

Lingo said the union is trying to raise the pay for the hotel’s lowest-paid employees immediately from $16.20 an hour, or just slightly more than the $15 an hour minimum wage in Maryland, to $20 an hour. In subsequent years, the union aims to narrow the wage gap between hotel workers in Baltimore and their counterparts in nearby cities.

For instance, hotel workers in Washington recently approved a contract setting minimum pay at $29 an hour now, Lingo said, and $33 an hour before the contract expires in 2028. In Philadelphia, the minimum wage for Hilton workers is $22 an hour, she said.

The one-day strike by Unite Here Local 7 hotel workers outside the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor hotel on W. Pratt Street is part of a nationwide protest. (Amy Davis / Staff)

A spokesperson for the hotel chain didn’t comment on the specific wage proposals, but released a statement Sunday saying: “Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor makes every effort to maintain a cooperative and productive relationship with UNITE HERE Local 7, the union that represents some of our team members. We remain committed to negotiating in good faith to reach a fair and reasonable agreements that is beneficial to both our valued team members and to our hotels.”

Mayor Brandon Scott is monitoring negotiations carefully, a spokesman for the Mayor’s Office wrote Monday in a statement, and has called for a “cooling off period” that could help the opposing sides find common ground.

The mayor is an “advocate for all of the city’s hospitality workers,” the statement said. “He deeply values their work in Baltimore and their right to fight for the best possible deal for their members.”

City Council members Zeke Cohen and James Torrence stopped by the picket line Monday to express their support for the workers, as did Democratic nominee for City Council District 11 Zac Blanchard.

The employees — baristas, servers, hosts, cooks, housekeepers, market assistants, bellmen, dishwashers and front desk agents — voted Aug. 9 to authorize a strike. The workers’ contract expired last Thursday.

The union claims that hotels took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to cut staff and suspend guest services that were never restored, such as daily hotel room cleanings, causing workers to lose jobs and income – and increasing the workload for the remaining staff.

About two dozen hotel employees picketed at noon Monday outside the hotel, down from an estimated high of nearly 200 employees, family members and supporters from other unions at 9:30 a.m., when the work stoppage began. The picketers carried signs saying, “One Job Should Be Enough,” and chanted to a drum beat pounded out on an overturned bucket by Hilton cook Rooheen Abid.

According to a union news release, more than half of the housekeeping staff reported in a recent survey that they had to use food stamps and/or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to augment their hotel paychecks. Sixty-one percent reported that they were on at least one form of public assistance, including public health insurance.

Another issue: The union wants the hotel to ends its practice of subcontracting work to temporary employees instead of providing permanent jobs for Baltimore residents.

Deja Richardson, 29, Sherrice Thompson, 37, and Bria Ramsey, 30, are all Baltimore residents and members of Hilton’s housekeeping staff. They said it wasn’t easy to go on strike and voluntarily forego a day’s wages.

But they said it was a better alternative than trying to pay their bills based on their existing salaries. They look for extra work wherever they can find it — baby-sitting, dog-walking or cutting hair.

Richardson, a mother of two young children, said that she is on publicly-funded health insurance because after paying for housing, food, transportation and diapers, she can’t afford the pricy policy offered by the hotel chain.

“We all deserve to be paid fairly and treated with respect,” Richardson said. “I feel that by doing this, maybe we’ll get a chance to be heard.”

Both sides are scheduled to return to the bargaining table Thursday.