Rich Maroko
President of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, AFL-CIO; Business Manager of Hotel, Gaming, Restaurant, Club Employees & Bartenders Union, Local 6 UNITE HERE.
Throughout his more than 20 years at HTC, Rich has distinguished himself as a fierce negotiator and tireless advocate for workers. He has developed an exceptionally effective strategic approach to fighting for our members. As a result, under his leadership, our union has achieved the best contracts in our nearly 100-year history and passed laws that have a tangible impact on the lives of hotel and gaming workers across our region.
As President, Rich is the chief executive officer of our union.
Rich’s early career
During the two decades prior to becoming President, Rich served as the union’s General Counsel and held various elected officer positions. Since coming to HTC in 2002, Rich has played a leadership role in virtually every aspect of the union:
He served as the union’s chief negotiator – not only winning unprecedented improvements in wages and benefits, but pioneering new language that empowered hotel workers, including panic buttons, immigrant’s rights, and the right to dignity and respect at work.
He led a number of successful strikes and pickets against hotels by strategically coordinating worker actions, legal strategy, public and media campaigns, boycotts, corporate campaigns, and political action.
He spearheaded the union’s efforts to win innovative laws to benefit hotel and gaming workers: from consumer protection laws, to laws that protect hotel workers when there is a change in management, to laws that ensure a safe and easy way for New York’s gaming workers to join a union.
Rich was the architect of our regional master contract, the GRIWA, and our union’s explosive growth outside of New York City. Starting in 2010, Rich took on a largely non-union hotel and gaming industry in New Jersey, Upstate New York, and the greater region. Today, our union represents over 8,500 members outside of NYC and have over 100 union properties signed on to the GRIWA contract.
Rich created the union’s legal department and managed the union’s aggressive litigation strategy – fighting cases in front of state and federal courts and before the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, and the Division of Human Rights.
Rich’s presidency: The first five years
Rich was elected and has served as President since 2020. He assumed the role precisely as the union and our members were facing their greatest challenge: the COVID-19 crisis.
He led our union through the worst of the pandemic: securing over $370 million in severance bridge payments for laid off members, extending health benefits when they were needed the most, securing early access to the vaccines for hotel workers, and using the union’s political clout and leverage with employers to propel hotel and casino re-openings to get our members back to work. He also successfully pushed to pass city, state and federal laws that gave laid off hotel workers additional severance, extended health benefits, and protected their recall rights. Most importantly, he protected our hard-won contract standards from attempts by the industry to erode them.
In the years since, Rich has re-negotiated two of our union’s three master contracts - those for hotels and casinos outside of New York City. These new agreements secured the largest wage increases in any renewal contract in our history, protected our affordable healthcare, increased pension benefits, and created groundbreaking new benefits, including our union’s first-ever childcare fund, housing fund, and paid parental leave.
During Rich’s presidency, the union has also secured protections for consumers and workers that are unparalleled. In 2024, against enormous, well-funded opposition, Rich worked with NYC legislators to pass the Safe Hotels Act, a landmark piece of legislation that protects hotel workers and guests in NYC. Consumer protection and notification laws across New York and New Jersey require hotels to notify guests ahead of their stay of disruptions, including union strikes or picket lines. Worker retention laws in New York City and New Jersey protect the jobs of hotel workers when hotels change hands.
Rich and his exceptionally talented team are committed to taking HTC, already one of the most effective unions, to the next level.
He has introduced a strategic plan for how to improve dozens of areas of our union’s operation – such as the way our union enforces contracts, leverages new technology, and takes on recalcitrant employers. Rich and his team are working to make sure that HTC not only gets tougher and stronger, but that our union continues to evolve into a sophisticated, cutting-edge operation that can fight and beat the well-funded, multinational corporations whose employees the union represents. In so doing, they intend to ensure that our union wins the best contracts, organizes thousands of non-union workers, provides the strongest and most effective representation, and wields the most potent political power – all with the single goal of improving the lives of our members.
Rich’s background
Rich is a first-generation American and the son of Polish and Brazilian immigrants. He credits his parents’ hard work and sacrifice with giving him the opportunity to pursue his education: graduating Phi Betta Kappa from the State University of New Jersey – Rutgers, then earning a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and later a Masters in Labor and Employment Law with distinction from Georgetown University.
He also credits his parents for instilling in him the belief that there is no higher calling than joining the fight for justice. Because of these values, rather than leveraging his ivy league degree for a big law firm job, Rich chose to dedicate his life to representing working people as a union-side labor and civil rights lawyer. Rich feels that being elected as President of our union is the greatest professional honor in his life.
Rich is a proud father.
Additional accomplishments
In addition to leading our union, Rich is the Recording Secretary of UNITE HERE International Union, which represents over 300,000 workers across North America. He serves on the New York State AFL-CIO Executive Council, Executive Board of the NYC Central Labor Council, New Jersey Transit Board of Directors and the Board of Cornell University's Center for Innovative Hospitality and Employment Relations.
