Affiliated Locals
The Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, AFL-CIO is the sole and exclusive collective bargaining representative of nearly 40,000 hotel, restaurant, racetrack, and gaming employees in New York City, Long Island, Westchester, Upstate New York and Northern and Central New Jersey.
Our union represents hotel and gaming workers wall-to-wall. This means that employees across every department are all part of the same union. Among the many departments where our members work are: housekeeping, public space, restaurant, room service, kitchen, stewarding, bar, banquets, mini-bar, audio-visual, front desk, PBX, bell and door, concierge, laundry, valet, engineering, maintenance, electrical, carpentry, painting, upholstery, business center, night cleaning, spa, security, surveillance, purchasing and receiving, EVS, storeroom, cage, slots, poker, and table games.
This unique structure has been incredibly beneficial for our union since its founding in the 1930s. It has allowed our union to create more collective power in bargaining with hotel and gaming companies – power that we have used to negotiate the best contracts for hotel and gaming workers anywhere in the world.
Our affiliated locals
HTC has affiliation arrangements with local unions that provide additional staff support and strength. Five local unions currently serve as affiliated service providers to HTC: UNITE HERE Local 6, IUOE Local 94, IBEW Local 3, IUPAT Local 1422, and OPEIU Local 153. These locals are also affiliated with other labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO, state and local labor federations, and various international unions.
Every worker represented by our union is, first and foremost, a member of HTC. Generally, HTC assigns its members, at its discretion, secondary membership with one of these affiliated local unions based on the work that they perform.
How HTC’s affiliation agreements work
For hotel and gaming workers in our region, HTC is the union. HTC negotiates their contracts, strategically builds bargaining power, and organizes new hotels and casinos.
HTC (and not its affiliated locals) is the only certified and/or recognized collective bargaining agent of the employees it represents. Affiliated local union staff, when acting on behalf of HTC members, work under the control and direction of HTC officers and staff and have no representational authority with regard to HTC shops except as authorized by HTC. HTC is the only union-signatory to all union contracts covering HTC members, and affiliated locals are neither parties to nor have any independent rights under those agreements.
HTC has authority to create its own subordinate locals, to accept new affiliated locals, to terminate the affiliation of any local, or to reassign its members to a different affiliated local, or to no local, at its discretion, and at any time.
Affiliated locals have no governing role within HTC whatsoever. However, all affiliated locals are required to comply with the by-laws of HTC. Neither the local unions affiliated with HTC nor any of the other affiliated organizations to which they belong have authority of any kind over HTC. HTC is not a subordinate body of any other organization or entity. HTC is not an intermediate body as defined under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA).
The officers of HTC are directly elected by the rank-and-file membership of the union. HTC answers only to its own members.
