Organizing for Better Working Conditions and Wages: The UNITE Here! Hotel Workers Rising Campaign

This is the published version of an article published by Just Labour in 2007.This paper examines the strategies and success of the UNITE HERE! union in its ongoing Hotel Workers Rising!: Lifting One Another Above the Poverty Line campaign in the United States and Canada. This unique campaign has generated national attention in both countries, and highlighted how changes in corporate policies aimed at pleasing the consumer – such as the shift to ‘heavenly’ beds – has had deleterious consequences for Room Attendants. The campaign has generated national media attention and attracted the support of celebrities, such as Danny Glover, and national political figures, including John Edwards. This campaign has utilized grassroots organizing bargaining and organizing methods and certainly been invigorating, but what do early assessments tell us about the success of this strategy, challenges in organizing hotel workers, and what are some policy and theoretical lessons? The current success and challenges of the Hotel Workers Rising campaign reflect the broader challenges and opportunities of the broader Change to Win coalition and union organizing of the service sector, more generally