A letter from HTC President Rich Maroko
May 18, 2026
I am proud to announce that our union has just reached a tentative agreement with the Hotel Association of New York City on a new Industry-Wide Agreement (“IWA”).
The IWA was already considered the best contract in the world for hotel workers – with unparalleled wages, health and retirement benefits, and rights on the job. This new agreement goes even further – delivering the biggest wage increases in our union’s history (more than 2.5x the average increases in the last contract), maintaining free family healthcare, increasing pension contributions, providing new benefit funds to address rising costs in housing and child care, protecting our members’ jobs, improving paid time off, expanding our members’ rights at work, and strengthening our already unparalleled ability to enforce the contract – all without a single giveback.
The best contract in the history of our union
The term of the new agreement is 8 years. This long-term contract provides you and your family with 8 years of guaranteed wage increases and benefits.
The raises in this new contract are the highest in our union’s history – by far. Over the life of the agreement, your wages will increase, on average, by more than 50%. By the end of the contract, Room Attendants and other non-tipped workers will be earning six-figures.
The agreement also maintains our free family healthcare benefits. Healthcare was a defining issue in these negotiations due to significant, unexpected increases to healthcare costs at the end of 2025. The new agreement protects your free family healthcare for the life of the contract – without a single reduction in benefits and without passing any costs on to you. Under the terms negotiated by our union, employers will increase their contributions to the Health Benefits Fund by 3 percentage points from 27.25% to 30.25% of payroll – a total value of nearly $65 million per year.
The new contract also provides an increase in employer contributions to the Pension Fund in the first year of the contract – on top of the contribution increase that went into effect just this past January. These increased contributions will accelerate when the pension will reach the point where the law allows the trustees to increase pension benefits.
On top of these huge economic gains, our union secured new benefits and unparalleled rights and protections on the job. A few of the dozens of new contract provisions include:
New benefit funds to address the rising cost of housing, child care, and threats to your jobs
Juneteenth, as an additional paid holiday
Fully paid parental leave
Protections for your jobs from AI and new technology
Additional protections for immigrants during a hotel sale or change in management
Various provisions that strengthen our ability to enforce the contract including:
Improved rights to information necessary to investigate, find, and fix contract violations
Broader power for the arbitrator to craft remedies that prevent bad actors from violating the contract and abusing your rights
Financial consequences for employers who try (and fail) to challenge arbitration decisions in court
Enhanced rights regarding employee privacy
A contractual right to be treated with dignity and respect by management
All of these new contract provisions – including your wage increases, benefits, and dozens of additional new rights that aren’t listed above – are explained in the full contract summary. Read the full summary of the proposed agreement and the actual Memorandum of Understanding.
What's next?
The union has scheduled an all-day ratification vote for Thursday, May 21. Members who work at a Hotel Association Bargaining Group Shop – the hotels sitting across the table from us in negotiations – are eligible to vote to ratify the proposed agreement. Once ratified, the union will execute the agreement.
Members who work at a hotel that has signed a “me-too” agreement, which binds them to the new IWA no matter the outcome, will not vote. These members will automatically be covered by the agreement once it has been ratified.
There are also a handful of hotels that have not yet agreed to the new IWA. The contract at these hotels expires on June 30, 2026. Our union is already focused on making these employers sign the new IWA and will inform the members there of any updates.
How did we win this contract?
To win a contract with such significant economic benefits and brand new rights that give you power and a voice at work, we need to come to the bargaining table with leverage. Leading up to and throughout these negotiations, our union was truly firing on all cylinders. Our union’s team carried out sophisticated and effective legal and political strategies, engaged in thousands of conversations with employers, and executed numerous bargaining strategies to create the leverage we needed. But in the end, we would not have won this agreement without the dedication of our members and the very real threat that we would strike.
The threat of a strike or a picket line is our union’s most powerful weapon. In every contract fight, we need management to understand that if they won’t agree to a fair contract at the bargaining table, we will take our fight to the streets.
During these negotiations, you sent management the message: If they refused to give in to our demands, you wouldn’t hesitate to strike. Management saw you sign up to lead as HEAT CAPTAINS. They witnessed thousands of you, in record-breaking numbers, show up at union rallies, canvassing events, and trainings. They watched as our delegates spent hours learning our rights under the contract.
Management also knew you would be able to afford to strike for however long it would take. Between the savings in our multi-million-dollar Defense Fund and the dramatic increase our union secured in New York’s unemployment benefits last year, our members have the financial resources to sustain an effective strike.
In addition, our union used its political power to pass legislation that would make it easier for the public to support our boycotts and picket lines. If management forced a strike, New York City’s consumer protection laws would kick in, and the hotels would be required to notify guests and offer refunds.
Together, our union has made history with this contract and bettered the lives of our City’s hotel workers for years to come. It is my honor to lead such a powerful union, to have the privilege to serve thousands of dedicated and hardworking members, and to work alongside such a talented and committed staff. Every one of you who volunteered your time at union events, represented your coworkers in a grievance meeting, attended our union trainings, wore your union button on the job, or even just expressed your support for the union, played a role in winning the best contract in the history of our union. You should be exceptionally proud.
Congratulations – and thank you.
In solidarity,
Rich Maroko
HTC President
Read the Industry Wide Agreement contract summary
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