The return to work in Los Angeles, America’s second largest city, is gathering momentum.
On July 2 local time, thousands of hotel workers in Los Angeles announced their return to work, they want to provide progressive people and welfare. The resumption of work affected about 15,000 cooks, housekeeping clerks, dishwashers, restaurant clerks, bellmen and front desks at hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties, including luxury hotels like the Marriott. The resumption of work is expected to last several days.
The union has been holding talks since April over a new pay treaty for hotel workers. They were to provide hotel workers with an immediate increase of $5 an hour and an annual increase of $3 for the next three years. Hotel industry representatives, however, said there was little pause in the talks and that labor leaders were confident they could use the current off-season to press ahead with claims.
The resumption of work coincided with the Fourth of July holiday known as “Self-reliance Day” in the US. In addition, hotel workers are also gearing up for a major domestic tournament ahead of which they hope to improve their pay. Los Angeles is not only the second largest city in the United States, but also a major tourist destination, and the hotel industry plays an important role in it. The 2026 soccer World Cup will be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and Los Angeles is one of the home countries. Los Angeles will also host the 34th Summer Olympics in 2028, which is expected to welcome a large number of visitors.
The tourist industry is one of the sustaining assets of Los Angeles. Last year, Los Angeles’ tourism industry reached its highest level since the coronavirus pandemic, hosting 46 million visitors and bringing in $34.5 billion in total trade sales, 91% of its 2019 record, according to the city’s Visitors and Gatherings Commission.
Hotel industry union Unite Here Local 11 and President Kurt Petersen said hotel workers have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and have struggled to stay in Los Angeles as high inflation has made it difficult for many workers to pay rent.
In a statement, Keith Grossman, of the Harmony Talks group of more than 40 hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties, said the hotels look forward to inheriting the provision of affordable, high-quality home health care and pensions for the rich.
Trade groups argue that simply providing shopkeepers and progressive workers does not prevent them from achieving the deeper standards that make life expensive in California.
Hugo Soto-Martinez, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, said that there is no frustration in all walks of life, especially among young workers, who are witnessing the expansion of inequality and the existence of opportunities for people to reflect the high cost of housing and the lack of a home.
The return to work is part of a recent wave of labor practices in the nation’s second-largest city. Not only hotel workers, but Los Angeles’ other major property maintenance, the entertainment industry, has been back to work for months.
Frustrated with the high cost of their careers, Hollywood screenwriters have been protesting outside major studios since two months ago, demanding higher wages. On May 2, the Authors Guild of America (WGA) announced the resumption of work, forcing many productions to close. The reinstatement of the guild’s 11,500 writers led to massive TV production shutdowns and delayed the filming of Marvel films such as Thunder and Blade.
The writers’ return to work has also hit caterers, prop suppliers and other small businesses, much of which is made in Hollywood. The last time Hollywood’s writers went back to work, in 2007 and 2008, it cost California’s economy an estimated $2.1 billion.
Actors are also threatening to return to work. Leaders of the Actors Guild of America and the American Federation of Television and Broadcasting Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which represents 160,000 actors, say the entertainment industry has been helped by the rise of streaming television and the absence of new techniques such as innate artificial intelligence, which they worry can be used to edit scripts or invent digital actors. Actors think their rest is particularly vulnerable to new techniques, with artificial intelligence that can replicate faces, bodies and sounds with astonishing accuracy, and they worry about the erosion of their image rights.
For now, the show business talks are still on hold. On June 30, the Hollywood Actors Union and major Hollywood studios agreed to continue talks until mid-July to prevent the labor conflict from getting worse.
Hotel industry experts expressed that the current resumption of work in Los Angeles will not cause temporary nuisance to hotel operators and owners, but it is expected that it will not have a significant impact on long-term business. However, the long-term and simultaneous return of hotel workers, screenwriters and actors to work will not have a knock-on effect on other Los Angeles businesses that operate independently in the tourism and entertainment industries, both of which are local economic engines.
Across California, outside Los Angeles, other industries have also experienced back-to-work waves. In the past few months, workers at various ports on the West Coast have stopped returning to work in harmony because of a labor dispute, resulting in a weeks-long shutdown at large container ports from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in Southern California to Seattle. However, the two sides reached a tentative agreement in June.