Posts tagged hospitality
The Faster Labor Contracts Act would force workers into unions they never voted for
June 4, 2026 // The retail, leisure, and hospitality sectors, by contrast, are traditionally harder for unions to organize because the workers who would back a union are also less likely to stick around. That’s why the unions want contract deadlines to apply to all negotiations, not just cases in which companies may be deliberately delaying things. Unions might otherwise find themselves in a “herding cats” situation because workers are constantly coming and going.
A Federal Court Limits the NLRB’s Power to Force Union Bargaining: What Hospitality Employers Should Know
May 5, 2026 // On March 6, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a significant decision in Brown-Forman Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board. The case addresses how the National Labor Relations Board (Board) may impose bargaining orders when employers interfere with union organizing campaigns
The Disillusioned College Grads Turning to the Labor Movement
April 10, 2026 // The fate of the college-educated working class is probably worse than most people assume. In one darkly hilarious detail from Scheiber’s book, he notes in a chapter about “salts” (people who intentionally go to work at a company in order to promote unionization) that one of these college-educated salts at Starbucks is actually making his highest wage ever there. When Starbucks is the best-paying job you’ve ever had with a college degree, something is truly wrong.
2028 Olympics could bring big wins for Los Angeles labor unions
January 25, 2026 // “We are going to have a force ... of working people to do whatever it takes, including striking if we have to during the Olympics in 2028,” Petersen said. “The Olympics can’t happen without the workers.” A coalition of labor groups, community organizations and religious institutions are pushing for the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee — known as LA28 — and the city to pay for building 50,000 housing units, pass a moratorium on short-term rentals like Airbnb, and protect immigrant workers.
Op-ed: Can Zohran Make NYC a Union Town Again?
September 9, 2025 // The new mayor could host big online unionization trainings with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have already done. If this led even a small fraction of Zohran’s 60,000-plus volunteers and over 6 million social media followers to start organizing their own workplaces—or to take a strategic job to unionize it—this could potentially generate thousands of new unionization campaigns. And were Mamdani to act upon our proposal to launch a broad Movement for an Affordable New York (MANY), then the pool of new potential workplace organizers would grow significantly.
All major Las Vegas Strip casinos are now unionized in historic labor victory
August 5, 2025 // For 25 years, her employer, the Venetian, had resisted organizing efforts as one of the last holdouts on the Strip, locked in a prolonged standoff with the Culinary Workers Union. But a recent change in ownership opened the Venetian’s doors to union representation just as the Strip’s newest casino, the Fontainebleau, was also inking its first labor contract. The historic deals finalized late last year mark a major turning point: For the first time in the Culinary Union’s 90-year history, all major casinos on the Strip are unionized. Backed by 60,000 members, most of them in Las Vegas, it is the largest labor union in Nevada. Experts say the Culinary Union’s success is a notable exception in a national landscape where union membership overall is declining.
Today’s hospitality union battle is over wages. The next one might be about tech.
December 5, 2024 // The following year, the Culinary Union added language around technology adoption to its contract. In its contracts negotiated in 2023, the union “protected and expanded” that clause, Bethany Khan, a union spokesperson, told Hotel Dive. For members of the Culinary Union, their technology-related worries go beyond robot replacements — encompassing everything from workflow-optimizing apps to artificial intelligence. And while the union’s contract language offers protections around how technology is used at hotels, it does not prevent companies from deploying new technologies in the first place.
New UCSD Report Shows Younger Workers Are Supportive of Unions
August 28, 2024 // Younger workers are far more likely to support but also be uncertain about unions, according to a report released today by UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. The report, published by the Economics Policy Institute, identifies three major shifts occurring among U.S. workers: a recent, marked decline in opposition to labor unions, a rise of workers who are interested in — but unsure about — unions and an emerging generation gap in attitudes toward unionization.
What the Biden Administration Could Learn From California’s Attempt To Ban Independent Contracting
April 8, 2024 // In other words, the president promised to replicate AB 5 nationally but has failed. I can only surmise that the Los Angeles Times doesn't pay much attention to California news, either. As noted above, AB 5 isn't the victim of Congress or industry—but of massive, angry blowback from California freelancers, many of them Democrats—in multiple professions who didn't appreciate losing their jobs. The story focused on San Francisco's settlement with a company that connects workers with hospitality industry jobs, so AB 5 is still wreaking havoc. The most aggravating part of the Times article cites a study from the pro-union Economic Policy Institute, which finds "blue-collar workers classified as contractors are losing out on as much as $16,700 a year compared with what they would have made as regular employees." Perhaps it should show how much money these workers are losing when companies axe their jobs because of the AB 5-style mandates. When it comes to economics, union think tanks, reporters, and the Biden administration are as clever as those proverbial worms.
Biden’s new rule on independent contractors wages war on workers, women and entrepreneurs
February 26, 2024 // In the past year alone, 64 million Americans freelanced, half of whom were women. Women choose independent contractor status because of the flexibility it affords them, a particularly important factor for those raising children or aiding in caring for parents or other family members. Ninety-two percent of female workers prioritize flexibility over stability when it comes to their careers. Flexibility in the workplace is no longer a commodity, it is a necessity.