A Letter from HTC President Rich Maroko
Summer 2025
For the first time in over a decade, our union will be heading back to the bargaining table for our master contract in New York City next year. The agreement we negotiate next year will define the pay, benefits, and rights on the job for NYC hotel workers for years to come – and we’re determined to make sure it’s our strongest and highest-paying contract yet.
Those negotiations will be challenging, and incredibly complex. That’s why our union started preparing years in advance. We’ve dedicated the pages of this Hotel Voice to sharing a handful of examples of what we have been doing to put our union in the strongest position possible – with a focus on our efforts to protect our high union density, a preview of some of the corporate and campaign strategies we have developed, the utility of building political power, and most importantly, the critical role that you, our members, play during a fight.
What we’re fighting for
There’s a lot on the line in 2026. Seventy percent of our members work at one of the 250 New York City hotels signed on to our master contract. This contract is already the best in the world for hospitality workers – but we’re going to fight to make it even better. We are going to demand higher wages and more funding to protect our medical and pension benefits.
We won’t only be fighting for more. We’ll be fighting to defend what we have. In negotiations across the country, hotel workers in other cities have had to fight for their latest contracts. Hotel companies have made proposals to freeze wages, eliminate pension plans, stop daily room cleaning, weaken protections against subcontracting, and gut scheduling rights. We cannot take the pay, benefits and rights that we have for granted.
If history is any indication, the hotel industry will come to the table looking to claw back our rights and weaken our contract. During the 2012 negotiations, management handed us a 17-page proposal designed to gut our contract. Among its pages were proposals to weaken our grievance and arbitration rights, limit our scheduling rights, reduce pay for various classifications, and weaken the provisions that protect union jobs from subcontracting and during a change in owner or management company.
How we will win
I have had the privilege of representing our union at the bargaining table for over 20 years – from brawls with the industry like the 2006 negotiations to countless property-specific contract fights. No matter who is sitting opposite us at negotiations, it always comes down to one thing: money. Specifically, our ability to convince employers that it will cost them more to fight us than it will cost to sign a contract.
There is a misbelief that the fight for the next contract starts when we sit down at the bargaining table. In reality, our union began working on this years ago. To win a contract as strong as ours, it’s not just about being bold and persuasive at the bargaining table. It’s about coming to the table with leverage. At our union, we prioritize and focus on increasing our leverage on a daily basis. We are constantly thinking ahead, strategizing, and asking ourselves how we can seize every opportunity to build more and put our union in the best bargaining position possible.
At our union, we prioritize and focus on increasing our leverage on a daily basis. We are constantly thinking ahead, strategizing, and asking ourselves how we can seize every opportunity to build more and put our union in the best bargaining position possible.
In every fight, there are thousands of strategies, conversations, and tactics that create the leverage we need. There’s bargaining strategy, contract costing, corporate research, market analysis, numerous legal tactics, strike logistics, public relations and media campaigns, boycott preparations, outreach to allies – the list goes on.
If we were to go into each area of our strategic plan for 2026, we could write a novel. Instead, we will focus this Hotel Voice on just a few of the strategies where you, our members, play the biggest role:
Training and engaging our members in the work we need to do and regularly mobilizing in large numbers;
Organizing workers at non-union hotels to protect our high union density;
Building a sophisticated operation that can run clever and strong public campaigns; and
Building political influence and using it to pass targeted legislation.
Our members should not underestimate the role they play in creating the leverage we need at the negotiating table.
Of course, if any hotel company forces us to strike, we will need our members to show up in large numbers to walk a picket line and turn away business. We need to send management the message that we are united and union members across New York City will back each other up during a fight.
The time to send that message is now – not after we’re on the picket line if negotiations break down. Our power is in the daily reminder to management that our members are willing to stand up for their rights and support their union. It’s the implied threat that we will take our fight to the streets if we need to.
That message is delivered through the work that our active members have been doing, and that we will ask all of our members to ramp up in the months ahead. The real leverage is thousands of members signing commitments to volunteer, and following through by spending time at a rally, legislative hearing, or member training. It’s the work of knocking on doors and cheering at rallies this Fall to make sure our union helps elect candidates to power in New York City who we can count on to have our backs. It’s the everyday reminders that you send shop-level management when you pin your union button on your uniform and confront management over contract violations, without fear. It’s the message we send when our members flood City Hall to fight for legislation, when our delegates put hours into trainings to learn their rights, when members start assembling HEAT TEAMS across the City, and when hundreds turn up to events like the Labor Day parade. Walking a picket line may be the most obvious way to show our collective power and our solidarity – but the fight starts before that. The fight starts now.
In solidarity,
Rich Maroko
HTC President