News & Commentary

October 25, 2023

Jacqueline Rayfield

Jacqueline Rayfield is a student at Harvard Law School.

In today’s News and Commentary, striking Los Angeles hotel workers reach a deal with a third hotel, and the United Automobile Workers celebrate nonunion autoworkers as future union family amid expanding strike at General Motors.

Striking union hotel workers in Pasadena reach a tentative agreement with Loews Hollywood, marking the third hotel to reach an agreement after four months of work-stoppages. This latest hotel employs 300 members of UNITE HERE Local 11. Both Loews representatives and union leadership celebrated this tentative agreement. Local 11 president, Kurt Petersen called on the rest of the industry to follow suit and share their prosperity with workers. This win for Local 11 members comes just days after reports of hotels hiring unhoused migrant workers to replace striking staff.

The United Automobile Workers expanded their strike effort on Tuesday to General Motors’ largest U.S. factory just a day after striking at Stellantis’ RAM truck plant. This move expands the unions strategy to strike all big three automakers’ largest and most profitable plants. G.M.’s 23 percent increase in wages over the next four years is still far apart from the union’s original proposal of 40 percent raises for its members.

U.A.W. president Shawn Fain has suggested that these talks with big three automakers are the first step towards a broader effort to organize workers at Tesla, Toyota, Honda, and others U.S. auto factories. Executives at the big three automakers have suggested that higher wages for their own workers would put them at a competitive disadvantage with nonunion automakers. But Fain insists that “nonunion autoworkers are not the enemy. Those are our future union family.”

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