Baltimore hotel workers ratify new contract with Hilton

In September, Unite Here Local 7 hotel workers went on a one-day strike and marched outside the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor hotel on West Pratt Street as part of a nationwide protest. Last week, Hilton workers ratified a new contract. Amy Davis/Staff

Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor employees reached an agreement last week with their employer and ratified a new contract, the hotel workers’ union said Monday.

Provisions of the four-year contract ratified last Tuesday include “significant” wage increases for hotel workers and increased funding for their pension and health care plans, according to a news release from UNITE HERE Local 7. The new contract also includes language around fair pay for banquet workers and around subcontracting.

A Hilton spokesperson said in a Monday statement that the hospitality company is “pleased to have reached” the agreement with the union, which represents employees “at the heart of everything we do.”

“We believe this agreement is beneficial to our team members and to our hotel,” the spokesperson said.

The agreement comes after thousands of hotel workers represented by UNITE HERE went on one-day strikes over Labor Day weekend. Many are still bargaining new contracts, including workers at Baltimore’s Hyatt Waterfront, who are also represented by Local 7.

The Hyatt workers “have held numerous picket lines, and caution that the labor dispute could escalate without a settlement soon,” the union local said in the release.

In both the Hilton and Hyatt cases, members are “really motivated” to secure a new contract, with Hyatt being “the next piece of the puzzle,” said Tracy Lingo, president of UNITE HERE Local 7.

She said Monday that hotel workers in Baltimore had fallen “significantly behind” others since ratifying their last contracts. The Hilton workers ratified their last contract in March 2020. Since then, the hospitality industry has taken a blow from the coronavirus pandemic, and inflation caused the worst price spike in four decades.

Members made “good gains” in their last contract, Lingo said, but many of them were “washed away by inflation” over the past four years. Hilton workers had been relying on benefits like food stamps to make ends meet and “choosing between housing and food” in recent years, she said.

The new contract, Lingo said, was focused on “narrowing that gap,” in part through a “significant” wage increase, as well as hard-fought pension provisions that took three cycles to get into the contract.

Shantia Devon, a barista at the city-owned Baltimore Hilton, said in a statement that the new contract “is going to change our lives” and that she won’t have to “choose anymore between spending time with my godson or running to food banks,” or wonder about taking a second job.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in a statement that he was “proud that Hilton and UNITE HERE have reached an agreement that puts our hospitality workers first and makes Baltimore City more competitive region-wide.”

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