More than two years after securing a new contract following an hourslong strike at the start of Comic-Con, workers at the San Diego Hilton Bayfront are back on the picket lines, wrapping up their fourth day of a walkout that has no end date.
What started as a planned three-day strike has now been extended after hotel management canceled a planned bargaining session this week, union leaders said Wednesday.
“The strike was supposed to be for three days but now it’s open-ended,” said Brigette Browning, head of Unite Here Local 30, which represents more than 730 full- and part-time workers at the downtown Hilton hotel. “When the Hilton canceled negotiations, the workers didn’t want to go back to work. They felt very disrespected by the company.”
The workers’ existing contract, which was finalized during the short-lived 2022 strike, expired Saturday. The last bargaining session was Aug. 18, the union said.
While the Hilton Bayfront did not respond to specific questions, it offered a statement in response to the ongoing job action.
“Hilton San Diego Bayfront makes every effort to maintain a cooperative and productive relationship with UNITE HERE Local 30, a union that represents some of our Team Members,” a Hilton spokesperson said. “We remain committed to negotiating in good faith to reach a fair and reasonable agreement that is beneficial to both our valued Team Members and to our hotel.”
The union, while acknowledging it doesn’t expect to get the kind of wage increase for its workers that it proposed in its opening proposal, has requested a $5 hourly pay hike each year over three years for non-tipped employees, which includes housekeepers, stewards, cooks and front desk agents.
The average housekeeper at the Hilton Bayfront currently earns $24 an hour, Browning said.
“We were prepared to have meaningful negotiations, and we understood that the company would not accept our opening proposal, but if they refuse to even sit at the table it’s impossible to have this strike settled,” she said.
When asked why the hotel’s negotiating team canceled the next round of talks, Browning said she was told that “they didn’t think we were taking this seriously and that further negotiations would be a waste of time.”
Hilton’s non-tipped workers got a $4-an-hour raise over two years in the last contract. A key provision the union successfully negotiated in that previous agreement was a guarantee that hotel housekeepers would be allowed to clean guest rooms daily unless a guest requested otherwise. The hotel’s previous policy, which became increasingly common during the height of the pandemic, was to not clean rooms daily unless guests asked for more frequent cleaning.
Martin Duarte, a lead banquet cook at the Hilton hotel, said he has little wiggle room in his monthly living expenses to cover any unexpected costs, given his hourly pay of $28. Rent alone for his two-bedroom apartment is $2,080, while his take-home pay is about $3,000.
“Because my shifts can start anywhere from 4 a.m. to 2 p.m., I couldn’t get a second job, and I’d rather have only one job because one job should be enough,” said Duarte, 50. “I put money away for retirement because I don’t want to work until I’m 80. I want to be able to come to places like the Hilton Bayfront and enjoy a vacation, something I haven’t been able to do.”
The Hilton workers in San Diego were among thousands of unionized hotel employees who went on strike across the country over the last few days, but as of Wednesday, workers in most of the other cities had gone back to work.
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