You are reading: Hotel Voice Spring 2025

Gansevoort Hotel

April 3, 2025: Workers at the Gansevoort Hotel joined our union in February 2024, voting overwhelmingly in an NLRB election to join HTC despite management’s vicious anti-union campaign. Last Spring, the Hotel Voice interviewed two leaders in that organizing drive, Danny Dhondup and Tsering Dorjee, and their next mission was clear: “Get the contract.” 

After months of tough negotiations, the Gansevoort workers unanimously ratified their first union contract, the Industry-Wide Agreement, on April 3, 2025.

With this, wages will jump overnight by an average of $7 per hour, bringing the Gansevoort in line with the city-wide union wage rates. These wage increases will be retroactive to February 2024. On top of wages, the workers will now have job security; free family health-care; a first-time pension benefit; more pay for night shift hours; the contractual right to dignity and respect; and a host of other rights and protections that make union jobs in New York City the very best in the world.

Wages brought up to IWA rates, resulting in average increases of $7 per hour

Contract ratified: 37 YES to 0 NO

Political action

The Major Elections to Look Out for in NYC and New Jersey

In New York City, every single elected position is on the ballot: the Mayor, Comptroller, Public Advocate, and all 51 City Council seats. The NYC politicians elected this year will be in office when our Industry-Wide Agreement expires on June 30, 2026.

In New Jersey, there are elections for Governor and all 80 State Assembly seats. The next New Jersey Governor will be in office when our regional master contract, the GRIWA, expires in 2028.

NYC MAYOR

The Next NYC Mayor Will Be in Office When Our City-Wide Contract Expires

Heading into 2026, we need to have politicians in office that would walk on a picket line with us and stand with us publicly – not support the wealthy hotel owners who will be on the other side of the bargaining table next year.

In March, our union invited the top candidates for NYC mayor to be interviewed by HTC President Rich Maroko, in front of hundreds of union members.

HTC President Rich Maroko and union members asked each candidate about the most pressing issues for NYC hotel and gaming workers:

• Will they commit to supporting our members, publicly and privately, during a contract fight – including if we have to go on strike? 

• Will they protect safe, high-quality hotel and gaming jobs and stand against sub-standard new development projects that would create bad, low-wage jobs? 

• Will they stand with us against any efforts to weaken regulations on short-term rentals – including our fight against companies like Airbnb?

NJ GOVERNOR

HTC Endorses Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop for NJ Governor

As Jersey City mayor, Fulop passed a labor harmony ordinance for hospitality projects; he promoted and encouraged fair labor standards in hotel developments; and he put his political capital all in to fight for hotel workers and tenants against abusive short-term rental business practices. Every step of the way, as we organized the majority of hotel workers in Jersey City, Mayor Fulop stood with us and gave us support.

"Over the decade that I have known and worked closely with him, I have found Mayor Fulop to be dedicated, hardworking, honest, and driven by a desire to serve the people he represents."

– RICH MAROKO, HTC President

We're going to call on you

Our union’s members have seen firsthand what we can accomplish when we elect allies into office – from turning the Safe Hotels Act into law last year, to winning laws that would make our picket lines and strikes more effective. We’ve also seen that we can use legislation to safeguard our members’ jobs and communities – from passing local laws that protected hotel jobs during the pandemic, to stopping Airbnb from turning homes into illegal hotels in our neighborhoods.

If our members hadn’t done such a tremendous job building and maintaining our union’s political power over the past twenty years, it’s daunting to imagine where we might have been in decisive moments like the COVID-19 crisis, or the fight against billion-dollar company Airbnb. The 2026 Contract Fight will be another one of these pivotal moments when we'll be relying on elected officials to have our backs.

In the coming months, we will be calling on you to help us get out the vote for pro-union candidates across NYC and New Jersey. Stay tuned.

The fight for affordable housing

This past winter, New Yorkers rallied in City Hall Park on multiple occasions to voice their opposition to Intro 1107. The bill, backed by billion-dollar company Airbnb, was introduced last Fall in an attempt to strip away protections that prevent the conversion of homes into tourist rentals. Intro 1107 also threatens to introduce unprecedented changes to NYC housing laws.

On January 23 and February 12, 2025, HTC joined tenants’ rights groups and other New Yorkers in City Hall Park with a loud message for tech giant Airbnb: Hands off our homes. New Yorkers need housing and job security, not higher rents and displacement.

In response to the public outcry, Intro 1107 was amended – removing many of the provisions that working people and tenants in New York have been objecting to.

While Intro 1107 is now a weakened and watered-down bill that has not made any headway in the City Council, we should assume the fight against illegal hotels is never over. Airbnb and other short-term rental companies stand to make a lot of money in NYC, so we need to be ready to stand up and fight back, if and when they launch another attempt to roll back restrictions on short-term rentals.

Our union thanks NYC City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams for standing by the working people and tenants of New York. We also thank Council Members Farah Louis and Diana Ayala, who listened to the concerns of tenants and workers and adjusted their approach to this issue.

HTC in the news

THE CHIEF

One of the city’s most powerful union leaders is used to big wins. He wants more.

Rich Maroko, the head the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, is leading the union into a crucial year for hospitality workers.

With another mayoral election approaching and three new casino licenses on the way, the Hotel Trades Council will once again play a crucial role in New York politics in 2025. Instead of hedging behind their growing power, Maroko and HTC are doubling down.

On organizing Resorts World NYC

New York City was still climbing out of the Great Recession when the Resorts World casino opened in Jamaica, Queens, in 2011... The Trades Council, the union representing hospitality and gaming workers around New York and New Jersey, butted their way into the casino’s licensing process and organized Resorts World staff. After a grueling bargaining process, the Hotel Trades Council secured a contract that doubled wages overnight and provided healthcare and retirement benefits.

“I remember doing the ratification there, and it was really one of the most fulfilling moments in my professional career,” says Maroko, the union’s general counsel at the time. “People were just so stunned by what the union had delivered.”

"Our membership is very engaged, very sophisticated, very militant. They understand the importance of the political process to the union and to themselves as working people. And so they show up."

– RICH MAROKO, HTC President

On the new downstate casino licenses

Now, the union is involved in the bidding process for the three downstate casino licenses that Hochul’s New York State Gaming Commission is expected to issue in 2025.

HTC is staking plenty of resources, thinking and political capital on those casinos. The union even changed its name in 2022 from the Hotel and Motel Trades Council to put gaming on the crest. Maroko’s bet is that full-service gaming in New York City will be another one of those big wins he covets. “Casinos create really, really good, solid middle-class jobs,” Maroko says, speculating the casinos could create as many as 15,000 new positions. “That’s life-changing.”

Resorts World is proof of concept. Workers there reported a 50 percent drop in unpaid medical bills, a 46 percent decline in late housing payments, and an 81 percent jump in after-tax pay in the two years after ratifying their first contract, according to surveys conducted by Stephanie Luce, a professor of Labor Studies at City University of New York.

Maroko has all but ensured new casinos will have union jobs, too. Every bidder will allow workers to unionize under HTC, and the union is now using its political leverage to shepherd proposals through the process, Maroko says. He wants as many candidates as possible to reach the final stage to guarantee the state issues all three licenses. “Every license means that many more good jobs,” Maroko explains.

THE REAL DEAL

Ex-employees of Surrey Hotel sue Reuben Brothers over lost jobs Hotel union is fighting owners over pandemic-era job-loss rule

Ex-employees of the Surrey Hotel are suing Reuben Brothers and Corinthia to get their jobs back.

Two employees, Donna McCammon and Vanessa Garcia, filed a lawsuit alleging that when Reuben Brothers bought the then-closed hotel in 2020, they were required under city law to offer jobs to workers who had been displaced. The lawsuit seeks to have their jobs reinstated as well as possible back pay or other damages...

The Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which pushed for the 2020 city law, repeatedly notified the hotel operator, Corinthia, of its obligation to offer employment to the laid-off workers, according to the lawsuit.

“Rather than doing the right thing in bringing back the workforce, they completely ignored repeated requests to bring those people back,” Rich Maroko, president of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, said in an interview.

“The union is going to keep fighting for its members until they get their jobs back,” he said.

Donna McCammon, one of the plaintiffs, said she had worked at the hotel for close to 20 years before losing her job in 2020. She said that the union helped her find a new job, but she and other long-term employees are hopeful to return to the Surrey. “They can't just let us go like that. We're human beings,” she said.