Striking hotel workers want a return to daily room cleaning

More than 10,000 hotel workers went on strike over the Labor Day weekend. Housekeepers, servers and front desk agents were among the workers who walked off the job at about two dozen Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott properties around the country.

The union that represents those workers, called UNITE HERE, says it wants its members to be paid more. It’s also calling for a restoration of services that hotels either stopped offering or cut back on during the pandemic.

UNITE HERE represents housekeepers, front desk agents, bellhops, doormen, cooks, dishwashers, servers, bartenders and more. Everyone except for managers is on strike.

One big change for workers and guests? Daily hotel room cleaning isn’t a given, said David Sherwyn with Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration.

“Some will do it every second or third night, some will do it upon request,” Sherwyn said.

Sherwyn has provided legal expertise to Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott in the past, and added some hotels are cutting back on room service, partly because visitors are using their phones instead.

“You can have Shake Shack delivered to your room, and even with the added costs of the delivery and so on, it’s cheaper than in-room dining would have been to the guest,” Sherwyn said.

Sherwyn said some service changes began with people not wanting to be around other people during the pandemic, as well as labor shortages.

Now, they’ve become part of the way some hotels do business, according to Carlos Aramayo, president of the Boston chapter of the hotel workers union that’s been striking.

He said cleaning a room less often means it’s harder for housekeepers. And also, they don’t get as much work. 

“If there are fewer rooms to clean and fewer people being put on the schedule, folks are scrambling to be able to get to their 40 hours in a given week,” Aramayo said.

But some guests have gotten used to making their own beds and meals as well as cleaning up after booking accommodations through apps like VRBO and Airbnb, said Sean Hennessey, a professor at NYU’s Tisch Center of Hospitality.

“I think Airbnb has trained guests to expect fewer services, and the industry itself has reflected that,” Hennessey said.

Another drawback for hotels that don’t clean as often? They start to show some wear.

Say, a guest drops a chicken wing on the floor. “You better get used to that stain, because it’s there,” Sherwyn said.

Even if these hotels start to deteriorate faster, Sherwyn said he doesn’t yet know if they would opt to pay staff to clean more often, or just replace the rugs.