Strikes start at top hotel chains as housekeepers seek higher wages and daily room cleaning work

abcnews.go.com:

Hotel housekeepers have for years waged a fierce battle to restore automatic daily room cleaning that was scaled back at many properties during the pandemic

With up to 17 rooms to clean each shift, Fatima Amahmoud's job at the Moxy hotel in downtown Boston sometimes feels impossible.

There was the time she found three days worth of blond dog fur clinging to the curtains, the bedspread and the carpet. She knew she wouldn't finish in the 30 minutes she is supposed to spend on each room. The dog owner had declined daily room cleaning, an option that many hotels have encouraged as environmentally friendly but is a way for them to cut labor costs and cope with worker shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unionized housekeepers, however, have waged a fierce fight to restore automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, saying they have been saddled with unmanageable workloads, or in many cases, fewer hours and a decline in income.

The dispute over daily housekeeping has become emblematic of the frustration over working conditions among hotel workers, who were thrown out of their jobs for months during pandemic-era shutdowns and returned to a changed industry grappling with chronic staffing shortages and evolving travel trends.

More than 40,000 workers, represented by the UNITE HERE union, have been locked in difficult contract negotiations with major hotel chains including Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Omni over demands for higher wages and a reversal of COVID-19-era service and staffing cuts. At least 15,000 workers have so far voted to authorize strikes this fall if no agreements are reached after contracts expire at hotels in 12 cities, from Honolulu to Boston.

The first of the strikes began Sunday, when more than