More than 10,000 workers at 25 hotels across the U.S. were on strike Monday after choosing Labor Day weekend to amplify their demands for higher pay, fairer workloads and the reversal of COVID-era cuts.
The UNITE HERE union, which represents the striking housekeepers and other hospitality workers, said 200 workers at the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor were the latest to walk off the job.
Nearly half of the striking workers – or 5,000 – are in Honolulu. That includes Briana Canencia, a food server for over a decade at a Marriott property who said she was on the picket line fighting for not only higher wages, but also respect amid reduced hours and increased workloads.
Canencia, who is Native Hawaiian, said she works a second job in order to provide for her two kids, and yet they live paycheck-to-paycheck. She said she worries that her family will soon be “ priced out of paradise.”
“It’s very important to me to be able to raise my children here and get them familiar with their ancestral home, because our blood is here, our family is here,” she said. “We deserve to be here.”