New York hotel workers union reaches deal to avoid strike ahead of World Cup | New York
A deal between a hotel association in New York and a hospitality industry group reduces the earnings of hotel cleaners. $100,000 as part of an agreement to avert the threat of a strike during the Fifa World Cup, which starts in June.
The eight-year contract agreement between the Hotel and Gaming Trade Council, which represents 27,000 hotel workers, and the New York City Hotel Association, which represents 250 hotels, calls for a 50% wage increase along with free family health care, increased retirement contributions, new benefit funds and expanded employment rights, union officials said.
Terms of the deal were announced Monday; It’s the day unions representing Long Island railroad workers called off a strike that had disrupted the city’s rail transit system for three days.
The hotel workers’ deal will increase housekeepers’ wages from about $40 an hour to more than $61 an hour for eight years.
“Our main focus this contract cycle has been wage increases as the cost of living for our members has increased so dramatically,” the union president said. Rich Maroko, he told the New York Times.
Vijay Dandapani, president of the hotel association, told the Guardian that his group was “proud that New York’s hotel industry continues to provide the best wages and benefits in the country.”
But Dandapani also warned that the group’s members face “tremendous economic fluctuations” and extraordinarily high taxes. He said 20,000 hotel rooms had been lost since the Covid-19 outbreak and demand had not fully recovered.
The expected demand for hotel rooms for the World Cup did not materialize. Data from commercial real estate company CoStar shows that reservations at many hotels in the New York City area are only about a third full, or nearly 12% below 2025 levels.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently said that football fans can wait until the second round matches are concluded.
Eight matches are planned in the region, including the final to be played at New Jersey’s MetLife stadium.
a pressure group, fifahotelstrike.orgHe had warned that the hotel workers union’s current contract would expire in the middle of the games. The distinct possibility of strikes, pickets and lockouts in some places was mentioned. [New York City] Hotels during the 2026 FIFA World Cup”.
The group challenged its supporters to pledge: “If workers go on strike or call for a boycott, I will not eat, sleep or meet at the hotel. [city] “Under the law, guests have the right to cancel their reservations and receive a full refund in the event of a strike, and I undertake to exercise this right.”
After the contract agreement was announced, Mamdani said in a statement that it was “a win for our hospitality industry, our economy, and a city that works best when the people who keep it afloat can also afford to live here.”
Beyond staving off the threat of strikes during the World Cup, the hoteliers union agreement has raised concerns that hotel room rates in New York City will need to rise to offset rising labor costs.
New York City has the highest average room rate of all major U.S. cities, according to CoStar, at about $335 per night. But New York City also has the nation’s highest occupancy rate.
