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Threat of hotel strike looms large

The hospitality industry is holding its breath, waiting to see what happens July 1 when labor agreements with New York City’s 25,000 hotel workers expire. Labor contracts will expire in six North American cities this year — Toronto, Honolulu, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston — representing two-thirds of the industry’s labor contracts in North America.

Since the last contract negotiations, the Unite Here union, representing hospitality workers in America and Canada, has doubled in size, and is beginning to use press tours and national bargaining to put pressure on hoteliers to give higher wages to hospitality workers. Coordinated job actions would make operations difficult for even the largest hotel chains, which traditionally have greater bargaining power over local unions.

Company filings show that hotel groups such as Hilton, Starwood and Marriott raked in record profits in 2005, a year that brought most companies back to pre-Sept. 11 sales levels. Hoteliers worry that a strike will erase any gains the industry has made.

Source: Bloomberg News Service, New York Daily News