CHICAGO, Ill.—More than half the 6,000 hotel workers who went on strike here Sept. 7 have won
contracts that give them health insurance if they are laid off in the slow winter season, but others at nine downtown hotels are still out on the picket lines, UNITE HERE Local 1 said Oct. 2. Workers at four Hilton hotels ratified contracts Sept. 30, and those at the Inn of Chicago approved theirs Oct. 1. That means 17 of the 26 struck hotels have reached agreements with their housekeepers, doormen, cooks, and other workers. The nine still out include two Hyatt hotels with more than 1,000 workers, according to UNITE HERE Local 1. “We get paid out of the strike fund, but that’s a fraction of what we make,” Demetrius Jackson, a convention services worker at the Hyatt Regency, told the Chicago Tribune during a march outside the hotel Oct. 1. “It’s a sacrifice we have to make. These hotels have made billions of dollars, and we’re just trying to get our just due.” Jackson’s wife, Jackie McCastle-Jackson, works as a hotel housekeeper and has been laid off during the winter months. Read more
