After 93 days on the picket line, San Francisco’s hotel workers secured a hard-fought victory on Christmas Eve, reaching agreements with three major hotel companies that ended the city’s most severe hotel strike in decades.
The new contracts are a major win for workers at Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt properties, who secured all their core demands: wage and pension increases, protections against excessive workloads and preserving their health insurance plan, according to UNITE HERE Local 2, the hospitality workers union.
When workers first went to the bargaining table in August, the three hotel companies, negotiating as a bloc, proposed reducing healthcare benefits and retirement contributions, the union told El Tecolote. Workers also raised concerns about growing job cuts and increased workloads for remaining staff, often without additional compensation.
Reaching a stalemate, hundreds of workers at three major hotels near Union Square walked off the job in late September. Over the following months, the strike grew to include six hotels and 2,500 workers, becoming the “the longest multi-hotel strike” the city has seen in modern history, said Local 2 spokesperson Ted Waechter.
From early morning to late evening, dozens of striking workers marched outside the hotels, their drum beats and chants echoing through downtown. Foregoing pay and relying on stipends from the union’s strike fund, workers held rallies and demonstrations, including an October sit-in on Cable Car tracks that led to 85 arrests.
Throughout the strike, workers and union organizers urged hotel companies to stop perpetuating San Francisco’s “doom loop” and to invest in the city’s recovery instead.
“We feel good, because we’re fighting for our rights,” Tania Barraza, a steward at the Hilton Union Square said during the strike. “We’ve seen a catastrophic fall for businesses. San Francisco isn’t what it was before, but by investing in the city, more work and more tourists will come.”
For weeks, the strike seemed like it had no end in sight, as workers promised to picket through the busy holiday season and into the new year, and more workers at other hotels threatened to join the strike.
Marriott finally returned to the bargaining table in mid-December, and after five days of negotiations, the hotel reached an agreement with Local 2 on Dec. 19. The deal, which was overwhelmingly approved by its employees, prompted Hyatt and Hilton to follow suit days later, ending the strikes by Dec. 24.
Notably, the agreement was struck with the help of incoming mayor Daniel Lurie, who, according to labor leaders, made calls to key hotel owners during the strike’s final weeks to help “get the ball rolling.”
“This historic resolution will positively impact not only our economy, but also our working families, our hospitality industry, and all San Franciscans,” Lurie said on an Instagram post celebrating Marriot’s agreement with the union.
The resolution comes at a crucial time for San Francisco’s beleaguered hospitality sector, which is expected to bounce back in 2025 with a projected surge in conventions. These events could also provide an economic boost to the city’s small businesses and restaurants.
The union hopes the deal will set a precedent for hotel workers citywide as they enter contract talks with other full-service hotels in 2025 – and they say more strikes aren’t off the table if these hotels don’t agree to similar terms.
“What we showed them is that we are absolutely unbreakable,” Waechter said. “Hotel workers in San Francisco are tough [and] ready for a fight.”