Dive Brief:
- The nation’s largest hospitality union, Unite Here, elected Gwen Mills president — the union’s first woman leader in its 130-year history — at its annual Constitutional Convention in New York last week.
- At the convention, Mills said she plans to invest in union growth, expand Unite Here’s political organizing and take on issues that impact hospitality workers, such as climate change and technology.
- Mills also pointed to what Unite Here calls “a historic showdown” in the hotel industry, as some union workers say they aren’t seeing the benefits of record-high ADRs. Some 40,000 workers in 22 Unite Here chapters across the country are gearing up for contract fights this year.
Dive Insight:
"Our union has shown incredible resilience and strength through the pandemic and has set new standards for jobs in our industries, proving that hospitality jobs can be good union jobs,” Mills said in a statement. “We don’t shy away from taking on powerful corporate interests, and we don’t back down from a fight. Now is the time to do even more to support workers who want a union."
Mills said she plans to double the annual investment in union growth across hotels, casinos, institutional food service and emerging hospitality industries. There are nearly 14 million non-union workers in the service industry, according to Unite Here.
Mills has experience as both a community organizer and a labor leader, and her early work on behalf of employees at Yale University resulted in “the highest job standards in higher education nationwide,” according to Unite Here.
During the pandemic, Mills ensured the union’s financial stability as secretary-treasurer. She also designed Unite Here’s political program, which organized against Donald Trump in 2020 and Republican congressional candidates in 2022.
More recently, Mills has led national labor efforts that have won “significant gains for hospitality workers,” according to Unite Here — including a multi-union strike in Detroit that resulted in wage increases for thousands of casino workers.
As president, Mills said she plans to accelerate Unite Here’s political organizing program in key battleground states such as Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania. The union’s labor-led canvassing program — the largest such program in the U.S. — sees its members canvas on behalf of political candidates who support union-friendly policies.
Liz Shuler, president of AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of unions, said in a statement that Mills’ political organizing scored crucial victories for workers in the 2020 and 2022 pandemic-era elections, when “nearly all Unite Here workers lost their jobs.”
“Under her leadership, Unite Here is delivering historic new contracts for workers, expanding into new workplaces and regions, and bringing in more women and people of color,” she added.
Unite Here represents nearly 275,000 hospitality workers across the U.S. and Canada.
In Las Vegas, where Unite Here is affiliated with the Culinary Union, workers have won “historic” wage increases in recent months.
And in Southern California, workers at several properties have walked off the job to advocate for similar increases — many of whom have also been successful.
Though industry employment rose last month, hotel owners are still struggling to fill open positions even with increased wages, according to an American Hotel & Lodging Association survey.
