With cleaning as many as 17 rooms per shift, Fatima Amahmoud’s job at the Moxy Hotel in downtown Boston sometimes seems impossible.

There was one time when she saw three days’ worth of blond dog hair stuck to the curtains, bedspread, and carpet. She knew she wouldn’t be able to finish it in the 30 minutes she was supposed to spend on each room. The dog’s owner had declined daily room cleaning, an option that many hotels have promoted as environmentally friendly but that is a way to save on labor costs and deal with the labor shortage since the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, domestic workers’ union members have been fighting a fierce battle to reinstate the rules. automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, who say they are facing unmanageable workloads, or in many cases reduced hours and declining revenue.

The dispute has become a symbol of the frustration over working conditions among hotel workers, who were out of work for months during pandemic closures and returned to an industry struggling with chronic staff shortages and changing travel trends.

Approximately 10,000 hotel employees represented by the UNITE HERE union walked out of work Sunday at 24 hotels in eight cities, including Honolulu, Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego and Seattle. Hotel workers in other cities could strike in the coming days as contract talks stall over demands for higher wages and a reversal of service and staffing cuts. A total of 15,000 workers voted to authorize strikes.

“We have told the manager many times that it is too much for us,” said Amahmoud, whose hotel is among those where workers have authorized a strike but have not yet walked out.

Michael D’Angelo, Hyatt’s chief labor officer for the Americas, said the company’s hotels have contingency plans in place to minimize the impact of the strikes. “We are disappointed that UNITE HERE has chosen to strike while Hyatt remains willing to negotiate,” he said.

In a statement before the strikes began, Hilton said it was “committed to negotiating in good faith to reach fair and reasonable agreements.” Marriott and Omni did not respond to requests for comment.

The labor unrest serves as a reminder of the pandemic’s continuing toll on low-wage women, particularly Black and Hispanic women who are overrepresented in front-facing service jobs. While women have largely returned to the workforce since shouldering the burden of pandemic-era furloughs — or quitting to care responsibilities — that recovery a gap in employment figures between women with and without a university degree.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. hotel industry employs about 1.9 million people, down 196,000 workers from February 2019. Nearly 90% of housekeepers in buildings are women, according to federal statistics.

It is a workforce that trusts overwhelmingly in According to UNITE HERE, these are women of color, many of whom are immigrants, and older women.

Union president Gwen Mills describes the contract negotiations as part of long lasting struggle to ensure a family income for service providers that is comparable to traditional male-dominated sectors.

“The work in hospitality is generally undervalued and it is no coincidence that it is disproportionately women and people of color who do this work,” Mills said.

The union hopes to build on the recent success in Southern Californiawhere, after repeated strikes, it won significant wage increases, higher employer contributions to pensions and fair workload guarantees in a new contract with 34 hotels. Under the contract, housekeepers at most hotels will earn $35 an hour by July 2027.

According to the American Hotel And Lodging Association, 80% of member hotels are facing staffing shortages, and 50% cite housekeeping as their top staffing need.

Kevin Carey, the association’s interim president and CEO, says hotels are doing everything they can to attract workers. According to the association’s research, 86% of hoteliers have increased their wages in the past six months.

“This is a fantastic time to be a hotel worker,” Carey said in an email statement to The Associated Press.

Hotel staff say the reality on the ground is more complicated.

Maria Mata, 61, a housekeeper at the W Hotel in San Francisco, says she makes $2,190 every two weeks when she works full time. But some weeks, she only gets one or two days of call time, causing her to max out her credit cards to pay for household expenses.

“It’s hard to find a new job at my age. I just have to keep the faith that we’ll get through this,” Mata said.

Guests at the Hilton Hawaiian Village often tell Nely Reinante that they don’t want their rooms cleaned because they don’t want her to work too hard. She said she takes every opportunity to explain that refusing her services creates more work for housekeepers.

Since the pandemic, UNITE HERE has regained automated daily room cleaning at a number of hotels in Honolulu and other cities, either through contract negotiations, complaint filings, or local government ordinances.

But the issue is back on the table at many hotels where contracts are expiring. Mills said UNITE HERE is pushing for language that makes it difficult for hotels to silently encourage guests to opt out of daily housekeeping.

The US hotel industry has recovered from the pandemic despite average occupancy rates remaining below 2019 levels, largely due to higher room rates and record spending per room. Average revenue per available room, a key metric, is expected to hit a record high of $101.84 in 2024, the hotel association said.

David Sherwyn, director of the Cornell University Center for Innovative Hospitality Labor & Employment Relations, said UNITE HERE is a strong union, but it is facing an uphill battle over daily room cleaning. Hotels see cutting services as part of a long-term budget and staffing strategy.

“The hotels say the guests don’t want it, I can’t find the people and it’s a huge expense,” Sherwyn said. “That’s the struggle.”

Workers resent what they see as attempts to squeeze more out of them while dealing with irregular schedules and low pay. Although unionized domestic workers generally earn higher wages, pay varies widely between cities.

Chandra Anderson, 53, makes $16.20 an hour as a housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore Inner Harbor, where workers have not yet voted to strike. She is hoping for a contract that would raise her hourly wage to $20, but says the company came back with a counteroffer that “felt like a slap in the face.”

Anderson, who has been the sole breadwinner in her household since her husband went on dialysis, said they had to move to a smaller home a year ago, partly because she couldn’t get enough hours at work. Things have improved since the hotel reinstated daily room cleaning earlier this year, but she still struggles to afford basic necessities like groceries.

Tracy Lingo, president of UNITE HERE Local 7, said Baltimore members are applying for pensions for the first time, but the biggest priority is to bring hourly wages closer to those in other cities.

“We are so far behind,” Lingo said.

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This story has been updated to correct that Unite Here now says workers at 24 hotels are striking, not 25.

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Associated Press journalist Jennifer Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this story.

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