Local 5 union workers at 8 Hawaii hotels go on 3-day strike

About 5,000 hotel workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 5 went on a limited 3-day strike at 4 a.m. Sunday over the busy Labor Day Weekend, which is expected to set traveling records.

Workers authorized a strike at the Sheraton Kauai Resort and seven Waikiki hotels: the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort; Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort &Spa; Moana Surfrider — a Westin Resort Spa; The Royal Hawaiian, a Luxury Collection Resort; Sheraton Princess Kaiulani; Sheraton Waikiki; and the Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort &Spa.

They are among over 10,000 UNITE HERE workers in several U.S. cities who went on strike Sunday after contract talks with hotel operators Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide, and Hyatt Hotels reached an impasse, Reuters reported. Workers at a total of 25 hotels are on strike including in San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, Seattle, and Greenwich, Conn., with union members from Baltimore, Oakland, and Providence, R.I., also ready to join the walkout as the Labor Day holiday weekend continues.

Last year, UNITE HERE members won record contracts after rolling strikes at Los Angeles hotels and a 47-day strike at Detroit casino.

This is Local 5’s largest strike since 1990 when union workers from 11 hotels went on a 22-day strike. In 2018 some 2,700 Local 5 workers at five Marriott-managed hotels went on a 51-day strike that ended with the ratification of a contract that gave union members up to $6.13 an hour in pay and benefit increases over four years.

Cade Watanabe, Local 5 financial secretary-treasurer, said the union kicked off bargaining with Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Kyo-ya during a joint session on April 24, where Local 5 outlined its major priorities, which were “wages and economics” and “workload.”

He said the union met with Kyo-ya and Marriott on July 29 and with Hilton on Aug. 1 and Hyatt on Aug. 6. But Watanabe said new bargaining dates have not been scheduled since workers took a strike vote Aug. 8.

Representatives from hotel companies Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott &Kyo-ya could not be reached for an immediate comment.

Watanabe said in a statement, “We have not seen this many of our members go on strike in over 30 years, and we don’t take that fact lightly. Today’s action at eight of our Hawaii hotels affecting more than 5,000 Local 5 members employed by Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott &Kyo-ya show that the issues we’re striking over are not just isolated to one hotel or company.”

Local 5 said that workers are concerned that after months of contract negotiations with their employers they are far from agreeing to solutions “to the top concerns they have raised including wages that keep up with inflation and the cost of living, proper staffing and fair workloads, and the reversal of COVID-era cuts in guest services.”

Watanabe said, “Today’s action demonstrates our deep commitment to these islands we all call home, to our guests who deserve nothing less than to experience our ‘aloha’ so they keep coming back, and to our families – we need tourism to work for us locals and not just our mainland bosses.

“Hawaii’s hospitality industry is in crisis — not because of workers or the pandemic that ended more than two years ago or even the changing demographic of our guests — we’re in crisis because of the lack of respect and care our offshore hotel owners and mainland companies have for all of us.”

Local 5 said since 2019 U.S. hotel industry’s gross operating profit increased by 26.6%, while hotel staffing decreased by 13%. In Hawaii, the union said the average daily rate of a hotel room increased 33% and the revenue per available room has increased 23% since 2019.

Kenziro Kloulubak, a housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, said in a statement, “I am on strike because our employers keep offering excuses, instead of solutions, to the issues making it harder and harder to do our jobs. It doesn’t matter how many times my coworkers and I tell our employer that as much as we take pride in our jobs, we cannot do our jobs without the necessary supplies and adequate staff. It’s sad that it has come to this and that it takes us going on strike for our employers to respect the work we put in to make them record breaking profits.”