Waikiki guests and the community are getting weary as more than 1,800 hotel workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 5 enter their 21st day of an open-ended strike at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort.
Local housekeepers, front-desk agents, restaurant staff, maintenance workers and other Hilton Hawaiian Village workers have been walking the line from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. since the strike started Sept. 24, and said they plan to continue until they have a new contract. Local 5 is asking people to immediately cancel all plans to meet, eat or sleep at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. While some guests and attendees have complied, others have moved forward, sometimes with disruptions.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda and recently elected state Rep. Kim Coco Iwamoto on Friday decided not to cross the picket line to attend the Wahine Forum, a leadership and career development conference for women organized by Hawaii Business Magazine.
Tokuda said she pulled out as an event speaker and joined workers on the picket line because “I do not cross picket lines when it comes to our workers, our labor unions.”
“While the Wahine Forum is an amazing event (with) a lot of great people and a lot of good discussions, for myself it was about being true even to that event,” she said. “If we are talking about lifting up women, lifting up our families, looking at the future of Hawaii and our role in it, then I really felt strongly that it was about being there on the picket lines supporting workers — workers that are just trying to earn a fair day’s wage, have safe working conditions so that they and their families can actually stay here and live in Hawaii and have a good life here.”
Iwamoto thanked workers for standing up for Hawaii and the quality tourism product, which she said is needed to grow tourism through visitor spending rather than arrivals.
“We know they are cutting back on room cleaning. They are not hiring as many workers to do the work that needs to be done,” she said. “It’s just not fair that we are all investing and promoting the brand of Hawaii only to have a lot of these corporate companies then cut back on the delivery of what their people are getting.”
Hawaii Business, organizer of the Wahine Forum, posted on its event website, “We are aware of the strike at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, where the upcoming Wahine Forum is scheduled to take place. This has put us in a difficult position. After careful consideration, we’ve chosen to move forward with the event, given the significant commitments and investments of time, money and resources already made by many people and organizations.”
While elected officials are often seen in picket lines, an unusual aspect of this strike is that some hotel guests are standing with the union. Some have shared videos or photos on social media about their experience staying at a hotel where workers are striking and/or joined the picket line themselves.
Cade Watanabe, Local 5 secretary treasurer, said guests are validating the union’s position and that their response has been far more positive than in 2018 when 2,700 Local 5 workers at five Marriott-managed hotels went on a 51-day strike.
Watanabe said the union and Hilton are still far apart, but he said Local 5’s goal “is to reach a settlement.”
A Hilton spokesperson said in an email that the company is “proud of the wages and benefits we provide our union team members, all of which were negotiated as part of our longstanding relationship with UNITE HERE Local 5. These are among the highest paying jobs in the hospitality industry in Hawaii, with regular pay increases, health insurance for our team members and their families that is fully subsidized by the hotel, generous vacation and paid holidays, and a pension that is fully paid for by the hotels.
“While we disagree with many of the union’s current demands, we trust that we share the same goal which is to negotiate toward a fair and reasonable agreement that is beneficial to both our valued team members and our hotels,” the Hilton spokesperson said. “We will continue to work towards that goal.”
Watanabe said no new bargaining dates have been set with Hilton since Hilton Hawaiian Village workers went out on strike or at any of the other seven hotels where Local 5 workers have authorized strikes: the Sheraton Kauai Resort; the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort & Spa; Moana Surfrider — a Westin Resort Spa; The Royal Hawaiian, a Luxury Collection Resort; Sheraton Princess Kaiulani; Sheraton Waikiki; and Waikiki Beach Marriott Resort & Spa.
Some 5,000 Local 5 workers from these eight properties went on a three-day strike over the busy Labor Day weekend, and Watanabe said it is possible that the current, open-ended strike could expand beyond the Hilton Hawaiian Village.
Jerry Gibson, president of the Hawaii Hotel Alliance, said strikes in general are tough on Hawaii’s visitor industry and on the people who work in it.
“We are usually one team, one dream, and now we are separated a little bit,” Gibson said. “It is difficult for the guests. Obviously, it is difficult for the neighbors and for those that are part of doing and receiving it. We’ve seen some solutions recently with the nurses and across the nation, and I’m sure our turn will come soon enough, but it’s a very difficult situation for both sides right now, and for the guests who are coming here.”
Certainly, some guests are making their dissatisfaction known. Patty Cooper, a visitor from Antioch, Calif., said she was blindsided by the strike, which kept her up for hours.
“The noise was horrible and I couldn’t sleep, so I went down to the street in my pajamas to complain,” Cooper told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
But after listening to what the union workers had to say, Cooper said that she decided to march with them and put a sign around her neck that said, “Respect our guests. Respect our work.”
“I support all of these workers who are not getting paid what they are supposed to get,” she said. “Hilton never said anything to my family about the strike. We had no food, no trash pickup, no cleaning. We were begging for towels. We were cleaning our own rooms.”
Becky Vieira, author of “Enough About the Baby: A Brutally Honest Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood,” has been speaking up for Local 5 workers and expressing her disappointment about her stay at the Hilton Hawaiian Village on her Instagram mom account, @wittyotter, which has more than 125,000 followers.
Vieira told the Star-Advertiser on Friday that if her family had been informed of the strike before they got to the hotel, they would have fought the nonrefundable clause and canceled.
Vieira described staying at the striking hotel as a “cross between complete anarchy and ‘Lord of the Flies’-style survival,” and said one day she and her 8-year-old son visited 19 different floors just to find soap on a small table of supplies left for guests.
While she found this visit to the resort wanting, Vieira said Hilton Hawaiian Village had been one of her family’s favorite hotels and that they would give it another chance if it settles with workers, whom she is using her digital platform to help.
On Saturday, Vieira posted, “A single mom shouldn’t be working three jobs to survive — no one should,” and urged the moms that read her social media to support Local 5 workers by donating to their hardship fund or complaining to Hilton’s leadership.
There was even a handful of guests who went to the Hilton main lobby on Oct. 2 and demanded a refund. They took some inspiration from Local 5 and chanted, “What do we want? Refund! When do we want it? Now!”
