Gwen Mills only has served as elected president of the nearly 275,000-member hospitality workers union Unite Here since June, but her tenure already has proven noteworthy: The union since September has orchestrated a series of rolling strikes against hotels at cities across the United States, which in some locations are affecting meetings and event scheduling.
Unite Here on Labor Day weekend began a series of strikes against individual properties, calling for "higher wages, fair staffing and workloads, and the reversal of Covid-era cuts." Strikes expanded throughout the fall across the country, many only scheduled to last for a few days to bring attention to the workers' contractual situation, while others reached new agreements with hotels. Some strikes, though, have lasted indefinitely.
Perhaps nowhere have the strikes had as much of an effect as in San Francisco, where as of early December Unite Here was striking hotels representing more than a quarter of the city's full-service hotel rooms, according to the union. There, Unite Here has lobbied state officials to investigate Marriott International's destination feesand called on J.P. Morgan to cancel its annual invitation-only Healthcare Conference in January 2025, charging executives and investor attendees with being "responsible for inflated health care costs that have contributed to the labor dispute."
At least one association, the Association of American Law Schools, has moved its annual conference out of struck hotels to San Francisco's George R. Moscone Convention Center.
Mills, the first woman ever to serve as Unite Here's elected president, this year told HuffPost that the union is fighting what she called post-pandemic hotel tendencies to cut back on services like housekeeping and other jobs. "A lot of the fight is about the workload issues, the cutting of services, and just what the hospitality industry is going to be," Mills told HuffPost. "The industry is combining jobs and cutting services."
Unite Here's labor actions this year also preceded Mills' elected tenure: a series of strikes at hotels in Los Angeles, begun in 2023, ended this year with new agreements at dozens of hotels. Time will tell if 2025 finds a similar resolution in San Francisco.