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This past weekend we celebrated Labor Day, a day dedicated to honoring the working class of the United States. The holiday earns most a three-day weekend but for those in the service industry it typically does not unfortunately. Those who are off often use the long weekend to travel and celebrate the last days of summer, meaning places like hotels, restaurants, and stores are often fully open for operation, usually with a full staff. However, in major cities across the country, approximately 10,000 workers at hotels walked off the job to strike with their unions.

The striking came after attempts were already made to negotiate a new contract between the hotel companies and the union, but no contract agreements were met. The workers walking out on Labor Day was meant to serve as a disruption to the busy holiday weekend, as well as act as a symbol of the holiday itself, which started as a result of labor strikes and uprisings. The union employees in question were a part of the UNITE HERE union, made up of various roles for hotel employees, food service employees, and other positions in service industries.

The striking occurred most notably in eight different cities.

UNITE HERE union members in San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Seattle, Boston, Honolulu, Kauai, and Greenwich. There were 24 hotels that experienced walk offs. The hotels most hit by the strikes were under the Marriot, Hyatt, and Hilton brands. One Fairmont hotel was also affected. The most common positions of people who participated in the walk off were front-desk staff and housekeepers, with other miscellaneous employees joining in.

The strike is still ongoing after the walk offs started on Sunday and could touch down in a few other cities at any moment.

Local UNITE HERE unions have authorized a walk off strike in Baltimore, New Haven, Oakland, and Providence. While they have not yet begun, people following the strike are waiting with bated breath to see what happens. Originally, the union expressed a belief that they would hold the strike for a few days in each city, but now they are not sure what turn the walk off will take. Spokespeople from the union gave statements on the largest issues, including how hotels are navigating post COVID-19. “We won’t accept a ‘new normal’ where hotel companies profit by cutting their offerings to guests and abandoning their commitments to workers,” said the international president of the union, Gwen Mills. This strike comes after one last year in which thousands of UNITE HERE members went on strike against hotels over the Fourth of July weekend in Southern California.