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The Boston hotel strike is expanding, again
Omni hotels join in on the picket line.
As negotiations drag on, more hotel workers at Boston’s premiere hotels are striking indefinitely until a deal is reached.
On Monday, hundreds of workers at the Omni Parker House and the Omni Boston Seaport went on strike. They join those at the Hilton Boston Logan Airport and the Hilton Boston Park Plaza, who went on strike on Oct. 6. The city’s total number of striking hotel workers is now close to 1,300.
Previously, workers at both Omni properties went on strike for three days from Sept. 19 to 21.
Room attendants, housekeepers, front desk agents, doorkeepers, cooks, and others are among the workers on strike. Strikers will staff picket lines outside the hotel entrances 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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Since April, hotel workers have been bargaining for a new contract, asking for wage increases and sustainable workloads.
Union members at Boston properties whose previous contracts expired on Aug. 31 authorized a citywide strike. Workers from other UNITE HERE Local 26 properties may strike anytime.
UNITE HERE Local 26 gave hotel companies, including Hilton, Marriott, and Omni, a deadline of Oct. 4 to reach an agreement before commencing indefinite strikes.
“The workers have a firsthand view of how busy the properties are and how much they’re charging guests for the rooms,” said Carlos Aramayo, president of UNITE HERE Local 26, in a statement. “The money that the companies are making has not been going into the workers’ pockets. We need a reset. That’s why the workers made this decision to go on an open-ended strike — to make the companies pay them the wages they deserve.”
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The Omni Boston Seaport Hotel is the largest in the city, with over 1,000 rooms and 100,000 square feet of event space.
Its smaller sister property, the Omni Parker House, is the longest continuously operating hotel in the country. This is the first year in its 170-year history that employees have gone on strike.
A request for comment from representatives for the Omni properties had not been returned as of press time.
“I’m on strike because I work two jobs in order to provide for my family,” said Yuri Yep, a restaurant server at the Omni Parker House for 10 years, in a statement. “I’m always rushing, and I don’t even have time to see my kids. I’m missing out on my own life.”
Recently, hotel workers in Greenwich and New Haven, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, ratified new union contracts, including wage increases and affordable healthcare.
UNITE HERE Local 26 urges guests not to eat, meet, or sleep at any hotel that is on strike.
UNITE HERE Local 26 represents workers in the hospitality industry in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
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