SF Hotel Worker Strike Enters 6th Week, No Deal in Sight

Tannia Turcios Brizuela picked up a megaphone on a recent morning and joined the loud chants of striking workers — “Contract now! Contract now!” — near the San Francisco hotel where she has set up banquets for more than a decade.

Her co-workers took turns drumming, stocking a sidewalk tent with water and snacks, and cooking pupusas and quesadillas to sustain the picket line during six-hour shifts, five days a week.

“It’s really difficult. Today it’s cold, it’s windy. I’d rather be inside working,” Turcios Brizuela said in Spanish outside the Hilton San Francisco Union Square hotel. “But we’ve got to be strong and hold out for better benefits for us and our families.”

The strike against three of the industry’s most iconic global brands has expanded to include nearly 2,000 workers. Most are entering their sixth week on the picket line. The employees at five Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott hotels near Union Square want wage increases and pensions that keep up with the cost of living. Additional demands include maintaining health benefits and the reversal of COVID-era staffing cuts that exacerbate workloads when there are surges of guests, according to the hospitality union Unite Here.

The walkout comes during a wave of strikes across the country by Unite Here members. In Honolulu, more than 1,800 Hilton staffers at Hawaii’s largest resort walked off the job more than a month ago. In Boston, a picket line by 600 workers has continued for over three weeks.

For Turcios, the work stoppage poses additional challenges as her husband, Marcos, is also a Hilton employee on strike. The couple, who have two children ages 10 and 12, rely on financial aid from Unite Here Local 2, which amounts to just a fraction of their usual earnings. The family has dipped into savings to keep up with mortgage payments for their home in Richmond.

“It’s stressful to think how much longer we are going to be outside,” said Turcios, 40, who is originally from El Salvador. “We feel a little disappointed because we’ve been here for a month now, and there’s not much we’ve seen from the company of wanting to sit down, to negotiate, to offer us a fair contract.”

In separate statements, spokespeople for Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott emphasized their commitment to negotiating fair agreements and noted that their hotels are working to minimize strike-related disruptions for guests.

“Hilton makes every effort to maintain a cooperative and productive relationship with the unions that represent some of our Team Members, including Team Members at Hilton San Francisco Union Square,” a Hilton spokesperson said. “Our hotels have contingency plans in place to ensure operations continue to run as smoothly as possible, and hotel teams are engaging with guests to ensure they are taken care of during their stay with us.”

Hyatt touted a long history of cooperating with their employees’ unions. Michael D’Angelo, head of labor relations for Hyatt in the Americas, said the company is disappointed the walkout continues in San Francisco.

“UNITE HERE Local 2 has not reached out to us to continue bargaining since the strike started,” he said. “We have offered competitive wages, health care and retirement benefits at the hotel that is on strike at this time, including an economic package that maintains no-cost health care for our colleagues.”

Lizzy Tapia, president of Unite Here Local 2, countered that Hyatt’s proposed pay and benefits are insufficient, and the company has not yet responded to an offer made by the union in August before the strike, which included making pay increases contingent on hotel profits.

“When they’re ready to engage in real negotiations, they should reach out to us because we’re not going to waste our time if they’re just going to maintain the same — refusing to contribute to our health care plans and no real wage increases,” Tapia said, adding that the two parties remain far apart.

Hotel occupancy rates in the city remain lower than in 2019. San Francisco collected $414 million in hotel tax revenue in the 2018-2019 fiscal year but just over two-thirds of that amount in 2022–2023, according to Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist.

The forecast looks brighter next year, with a projected increase in visitors and gains in lodging and tourism spending, according to the nonprofit San Francisco Travel Association, the city’s official tourism marketing organization.

Most strikes tend to last less than a week, in large part because workers sacrifice some or all of their pay during the work stoppage. The longer a labor disruption continues, the more pressure can grow for employers as well, said Johnnie Kallas, who directs the Labor Action Tracker, documenting work stoppages of all sizes since 2021.

“Employers are going to have a difficult time finding replacement workers, paying for replacement workers, keeping operations going, potentially having some pressure from external stakeholders in the community or maybe potentially even from guests,” said Kallas, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois School of Labor and Employment Relations.

Strike activity has intensified as workers contend with wages that haven’t kept up with inflation. Meanwhile, low unemployment gives unions some leverage, as it’s harder for some industries to attract and retain workers, said John Logan, who directs labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University.

Large, successful walkouts, such as the United Auto Workers against three major manufacturers last fall, have also emboldened union members, he added. The UAW strike lasted six weeks and resulted in a deal with pay increases of at least 33% over a four-and-a-half-year contract.

“We are seeing an increase in the willingness of unions to threaten strikes and to go out and strike in support of major pay increases because of the cost of living,” Logan said.

Logan believes the hotel workers will likely hold out for the kind of substantial pay raises Unite Here achieved with 73 hotels in Southern California and Arizona over the last year. According to Unite Here Local 11, the intermittent strikes involving 10,000 workers secured average wage increases of $11.25 an hour over four years.

“There’s just a new sort of confidence within the labor movement at this moment,” Logan said. “You just get a sort of feeling that, ‘This is our moment to make up for losses of the past decade, particularly since the pandemic. So if we don’t strike now to get a big pay increase, then we might not have a better opportunity.”