Seven thousand hotel workers across the US are on strike against Marriott, the world’s largest hotel chain. A strike that started with seven hotels in Boston quickly spread to San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Oakland, Detroit, and Hawaii.
Marriott’s profits have doubled in five years. In 2016, the hotel chain expanded its empire when it acquired Starwood’s 1,200 properties, including the Westin and Sheraton hotel chains.
Sales last year totaled $23 billion. Yet workers say they haven’t seen it in their paychecks or benefits. Many are working two jobs to make ends meet. Rising housing costs have also forced many to live far from the cities they work in. UNITE HERE locals in different regions are negotiating separately, but rallying around a common slogan: “One Job Should Be Enough.” While local issues separate workers in different cities, the strikers have three core sets of demands: job security, an end to unsafe overwork, and better wages and benefits.
Courtney Leonard, a server at the Westin Boston Waterfront, commutes 100 miles a day round trip from New Bedford. She’s originally from Boston, but can’t afford to live in the city.
“I drive two and a half hours each way,” she said. “It’s awful. I’m 28, newly married, and I feel like my life is on hold.”
Fifteen hundred Marriott employees at seven hotels launched the first hotel strike in the Boston’s history on October 3.
Since then, Leonard has spent 12 hours each day picketing her own hotel and others around the city.
“We work for one of the richest employers, but the workers are being left behind,” she said. “There are room attendants working into their seventies. It’s heartbreaking. They are here because they need the health insurance. They can’t retire.”
During the Boston strike, hotel restaurants…