NYC Hotel Housekeepers More Than Double Their Salaries

New York City hotel housekeepers signed an eight-year contract that would increase wages by more than 50%, union officials told The New York Times.

An annual salary of at least US$100,000 will be implemented for NYC hotel cleaners following the labor agreement between the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council and the Hotel Association of New York, finalized on Tuesday.

The hotel workers’ union said the new contract would raise housekeepers’ pay from just under $40 an hour to over $61 an hour by 2034. Additionally, the hotel owners will continue to pay the full cost of providing healthcare benefits to 27,000 union members and their families.

By the sixth year of the hotel workers’ contract, they would earn more than $100,000 annually, the union said. That would amount to an increase of about 52%, or a compounded annual growth rate of more than 5%. By the end of the proposed contract, in 2034, union housekeepers could be earning about $110,000 a year.

The deal averts a threatened strike this summer that could have disrupted the influx of tourists expected for the World Cup and America’s 250th birthday celebration. Rising labor expenses will likely lead to higher costs for visitors, but NYC already has the highest average room rates of any major U.S. city, about $335 a night, The New York Times reported. In the past year, New York hotels also had the nation’s highest occupancy rate, about 84%.

In the past few years, The New York Times reported that hotel employees had gone on strike in several major cities, including Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. However, no citywide strike by hotel housekeepers in NYC had occurred since a 1985 walkout that lasted nearly a month.

The new NYC hotel housekeepers’ contract coincides with a sharp rise in the region’s cost of living, prompting the union to seek raises above inflation. In the past year, consumer prices in the region rose 4.6%, which was significantly higher than the national inflation rate of 3.8%, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.