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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. How did you celebrate Labor Day? Well, thousands of hotel workers in nine cities around the country, including Greenwich, Connecticut, locally went on strike Sunday and Monday. The workers are part of the UNITE HERE union protesting pay and working conditions. We've talked about the history of labor unions and employment on the show this week in our 100 Years series. Now, let's talk about some current issues at hotels. Plus, we'll touch on potential strikes at Boeing and at east and west coast ports. We're joined for this by Chris Isidore, senior writer at CNN Business. Chris, thanks for doing this. Welcome to WNYC.

Chris Isidore: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Starting with the Labor Day strikes at hotels, what was the scope of the strike? I said nine cities, like how many workers, how many hotels?

Chris Isidore: It reached 25 hotels, and hotels had a little over 23,000 rooms in them. Since it was a very busy holiday weekend for travel, record number of people being screened by TSA at airports, and 9% increase in domestic travel according to AAA, there were a lot of people having to deal with less services at the hotels, loud picket lines out front. All the hotels stayed open, but it probably wasn't the most pleasant place to be staying at any of them.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Now, listeners, if you are one of the hotel workers in Greenwich or anywhere else who took part in this job action, we would love to hear from you, 212-433-WNYC. Also anyone who now works or has previously worked at any hotel here in New York City or anywhere else. What's the lifestyle like working for other people who are on their Labor Day weekend vacations or on business trips or whatever? 212-433-WNYC.

I realized there were so many different jobs in hotels that the experiences could be all over the place, so whatever yours was, you can call in with it. What do you see as the issues in your workplace or these workplaces, if you're not there anymore, that are serious enough to provoke a strike? Anyone involved in the hotel business or have been, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. If you were one of those tens of thousands of people who happened to be staying at one of the affected hotels over Labor Day weekend, tell us how that went, and if you noticed.

For good measure, if you're a Boeing worker or work at the ports, you can call or text us, too, as we will get to those looming possible strike issues. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692, call or text as we have Chris Isidore of CNN Business. The union, I should say, that represents the hotel workers is UNITE HERE. Its roots go back to the garment industry. It used to be the Ladies Garment Workers Union. Now, it's UNITE HERE and it includes hospitality workers as well and other things in various cities. What are the UNITE HERE workers' demands?

Chris Isidore: It's mostly about pay and to some extent, work conditions, restoring some of the things that were dropped during the pandemic. For example, a lot of hotels don't offer daily room cleaning anymore. That not only lowers the number of housekeeping jobs at each hotel, but it makes the work of the housekeeping staff who are working that much more difficult because it's tougher to clean a room that no one has been in in two, three, four days than it is to clean a room daily when there's-

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that's interesting.

Chris Isidore: -not as much a mess.

Brian Lehrer: From my own experience staying in hotels a few times in recent years, they try to sell this as an environmental measure, right? Where they ask the guests if you don't want your room cleaned every day to save the environment or whatever, because maybe not as much cleaning products, not as much laundry, if you don't change your towels every day, whatever, you don't have to have your room cleaned every day. Have you seen that?

Chris Isidore: I haven't particularly seen the environmental pitch. I suppose there is some legitimate savings on the environment, but it's mostly cost. According to UNITE HERE, not having daily cleaning reduces the number of housekeeping jobs by 39%, so it's simply jobs and money. A lot of hotels still haven't returned room service. There were a lot of people who used to get good money for tips for doing room service. Even if they still have a job, they're doing kind of grab-and-go things where they don't get tips, so they're not getting as much money.

It's also just basic wages. The hotels are doing very well as an industry. They're having very strong profits and they've bounced back very nicely from the pandemic, but the worker wages have not. The union says that a lot of the workers really can't afford to live in the cities that they're working in now. I talked to one worker up in Boston who's entire rent is taken up by her salary working as a banquet server, and she has to work Uber just to pay all the other bills other than rent.

The main issue is wages, and especially at a time of strong profits, it's a good time for unions to be trying to push for big improvements in wages. We saw that with the auto workers strike last year, where the motto was record profits equal record contracts. We saw the Teamsters get a very good contract out of UPS in a period of record profits, so it makes sense for the UNITE HERE to be pushing for significantly better wages for their members in the hotel industry.

Brian Lehrer: Can you put some numbers on that? Like who and what kinds of hotel jobs make what kinds of wages and what they're asking for?

Chris Isidore: I don't have that, and what they're asking for is complicated. Each of the nine cities has multiple negotiations going on. They'll be negotiating with one company or one property in some cases, so there are more than a dozen different negotiations taking place. The wages are obviously going to be very different in Boston and Greenwich than they might be in some of the lower cost cities. Although all these hotels that were struck this weekend were pretty much high cost of living locations.

They were Boston, they were Greenwich, they were west coast cities; San Jose, San Diego, and some locations in Hawaii, places like that. None of these places were low cost of living cities, and that's one of the reasons that the workers say they desperately need wage improvement.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a text message, listener writes, "I was previously a manager of a hotel in Soho. They are one of the only non-union hotels in Manhattan. I can say confidently after reviewing the P&L report that they are not getting fair wages. Is it legal to even be a non-union hotel?" How about an answer to that explicit question at the end of that text?

Chris Isidore: It's definitely legal. Less than 10% of private sector workers nationwide are in unions, so there's no requirement to be in a union in just about any job in this country. Nearly half of union members nationwide are in the public sector. They're working for state, local governments, federal government, in some cases. You're relatively rare if you're a union member working for a business as opposed to a government.

Brian Lehrer: As far as this person who used to work at a Soho hotel, listener writes, "I think a different union represents New York City hotel workers, not UNITE HERE." Do you happen to know? I don't know.

Chris Isidore: I'm afraid I don't, I'm sorry. Usually, I only get involved with these things when there is some labor dispute like this strike. To be clear to people, the strike is over not because there was a deal, but because the plan was to only be out for three days. US unions have started to use this limited duration strike strategy where they go on strike and they it's not an open-ended strike that goes on until there's a contract breach, like with the auto strike last fall, but where they're out for a certain number of times.

It worked well, although it takes some time, but it worked well for UNITE strike against 65 hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties last year. Which, like this one, started over a busy holiday weekend, 4th July in that case. Then they would bring the strikes back when there were big tourist type events. When Taylor Swift came to Los Angeles, they brought the strikes back, things like that.

Brian Lehrer: To make their point.

Chris Isidore: It took until this year for them to win contracts at most of those hotels, but they were eventually able to get what the union refers to as record contracts.

Brian Lehrer: I'm seeing on the union website that the San Diego strike is ongoing. Do you know anything about that?

Chris Isidore: That's the exception of the 25 places that went on strike, 24 of them were back at work. That one remains open-ended, and UNITE HERE has done open-ended strikes as well as short-term [unintelligible 00:11:44].

Brian Lehrer: Oops, did we lose Chris?

Chris Isidore: Detroit casinos last year. That lasted about five weeks, I believe.

Brian Lehrer: Brian in Morris County in Jersey, you're on WNYC. Hi, Brian?

Brian: Hi, Brian. Hello to your guest. I spent some time-- the first 30 years of my life, working in restaurants and hotels, and I just wanted to offer this. For those of us who now go to hotels, we're guests, we stay there, we interact with the workers. In my experience lately, I just see folks-- especially after the pandemic, treating housekeepers like servants, treating room service employees like servants.

The impatience that I see at the front desk, whether it's for check in or check out, it's mind-blowing to me how people can go from one moment being kind and professional, and then when they turn back, they're not cleaning their own rooms, they're not making their own meals, and they just revert to this really terrible-- treating people with such indignity, I think it is. People can only take so much of that.

It's unfortunate in the post pandemic world, there just seems to be much more impatience and anger, and I don't blame the folks for taking their time.

Brian Lehrer: Brian, thank you very much. Yes, I don't know if you've reported on this aspect, Chris, or anyone else in hotels. Even if you don't work in a hotel, if you work in a restaurant or almost any service industry, you could call in in the next few minutes and say whether you've noticed an increase in rudeness on the part of customers. This is certainly not new as a concept. Right, Chris? It's a perennial that too many people just don't have consideration for the service workers in their lives as full human beings like themselves. They're just, "Where's my this? Where's my that? Why aren't you doing this? Hello, check me in.? You know what I mean?

Chris Isidore: Right. I'm sure that's especially true, unfortunately, and probably with more and more upper end hotels, too. People do have an expectation that they don't have to treat people relatively well if they're not going to see them on a regular basis. For the most part, the hotels, you're not seeing people on a regular basis. You may never see them again. Unfortunately, I think that encourages bad behavior.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners writing in to clarify who represents hotel workers in New York City, and it turns out to be the Hotel Trades Council, local one, or somebody else says, local six. Either way, it's the HTC, the Hotel Trades Council, that a few listeners are clarifying. Another listener writes, "I hope people realize the answer is increased wages after an inflationary period, not to hope for prices to go down to pre-inflation levels, which will not happen." That's after somebody else wrote that they are seeing big increases in prices in hotel rooms-

Chris Isidore: Sorry, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: -since the pandemic. Is that part of it, to your knowledge? Were you able to hear the question?

Chris Isidore: No. You broke up there for a moment, and I'm afraid I didn't hear the whole comment.

Brian Lehrer: I was just asking if hotel room prices have gone up a lot with inflation in general in the last few years.

Chris Isidore: Yes. Again, that's partly supply and demand. Travel, as I said, is way up. There's a lot of pent up demand for travel. People who couldn't travel for a couple of years during the pandemic were very eager to start traveling again. As I said, we had record screenings at airports this past weekend by TSA. We had another 9% increase in domestic travel according to AAA. It's not that people have been building a lot more hotels, Econ 101 class. Increased demand and steady supply means higher prices, and in some cases, less supply because some hotels did not make it through the pandemic, and so they're not there to serve people.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, also on the New York Hotel Trades union, listener writes, "An excellent union that offers completely free health care from their four health centers in the city, including mental health care and dental." A few more minutes with Chris Isidore from CNN Business and your calls were texts about the hotel workers strike that took place in nine different cities, including Greenwich, Connecticut. Locally, hotel workers strike for two days over Labor Day weekend, Sunday and Monday, so they made their point while people were noticing.

Coming up next, by the way, our next segment after this is going to be a presidential race segment we we're going to look specifically at Florida and President or former President Trump's recent flip flop on whether he would support as a Florida voter the abortion rights referendum that's on the ballot there. Even the question unthinkable just a few years ago, could Florida be in play as a swing state this year? Possibly or largely because of the abortion rights issue that Trump caused by appointing the justices who overturned Roe. That's coming up in a few minutes, but let's take another hotel-oriented call right now. Jesse in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jesse?

Jesse: Hi. Your guest mentioned that they bring back the strikes for major events. I remember I was in Los Angeles for Anime Expo July 4th weekend last year, which is a big anime convention, and UNITE HERE struck that weekend. They were picketing a lot of the convention hotels and they struck the JW Marriott, which had programming for the convention, but they didn't prevent people from going inside. They were really cool with a lot of the attendees taking photos with cosplayers and the like. I was staying in the InterContinental in Los Angeles. My room was on the 50th floor, but I could still hear them drumming from all the way down the street level in the morning.

Brian Lehrer: The strikers from the street?

Jesse: Yes. It was the first time I ever saw a Scabby the Rat inflatable outside of New York.

Brian Lehrer: Did you get your consciousness raised by that? Would you put it that way?

Jesse: Well, I'm a union member myself.

Brian Lehrer: Did you get your services affected? Yeah, go ahead.

Jesse: I'm a union member myself, so of course I support the strike, but there wasn't really much effect. I mean, not an effect, but really not much disruption, I would say to the attendees, except for maybe waking them up earlier than they wanted to. Since it's a convention, a lot of people would want to attend the convention early, so there's that.

Brian Lehrer: Jesse, thanks a lot. Before we run out of time, Chris, I did say I wanted to touch on a couple of other potential strikes on the horizon. One would be at Boeing, which has so many problems these days. Aren't they responsible for those people who are stuck in space? They were supposed to be up there for like eight days, but now they can't come home till next year. Was that a Boeing problem?

Chris Isidore: Yeah, that is a Boeing problem. That's a part of Boeing, actually, that's not going to be on strike. The part that's going to be on strike is the part that makes commercial airplanes, which has had five years of serious problems with fatal crashes, and groundings of planes, and door plugs blowing off the side of the planes, whistleblower reports before Congress and everything. Boeing hasn't had almost any good news in more than five years.

That strike is due to start a week from tomorrow if there's no deal reached, and last word from the union is that they're far apart. The union's very upset because they gave up concessions in the two previous contracts-- things like healthcare and retirement, and they're not willing to do it right now. Now, I mentioned all the unions which have reached very good deals because they were dealing with companies that were making record profits. It's easier sometimes, oftentimes, to get a good deal with a company making record profits.

Boeing has lost $33 billion in the last five years, so it's not exactly a great time to be trying to get top dollar from them, but even Boeing admits that they're going to have to give the workers significant raises [unintelligible 00:21:11].

Brian Lehrer: While we're talking about the airline industry, somebody wrote in, "Don't forget the United Airlines strike vote, though there may be a cooling off period." Are you familiar with that?

Chris Isidore: Yes. The airline workers in this country work under a completely different labor law than hotel workers or Boeing workers or auto workers work under. It's the oddly named Railway Labor Act that controls airline workers and railroad workers. If you remember, back in 2022, the railroad workers voted against the contracts that were being offered to them, and they still couldn't go on strike. They had Congress pass law that imposed a contract on them that they did not want. The same thing could happen at United and other airlines which are in negotiations. It's just unlikely under the Railway Labor Act that there would be an airline strike.

Brian Lehrer: One more. There's a potential strike I see by longshoremen at east and west coast ports, including, locally--

Chris Isidore: East coast ports.

Brian Lehrer: Just east coast ports. Okay.

Chris Isidore: Just east coast. The west coast is [unintelligible 00:22:37].

Brian Lehrer: Including New Jersey, I'm saying, only this one isn't over wages, it's over automation.

Chris Isidore: It's over both. The port operators and shipping companies are making very strong profits as well, and the workers want their wages increased significantly now. Automation has been an issue for 60 years at ports. It used to be everything was loaded by hand. Now it's all contained-- not all, but significantly in containers, and that requires a lot less work. Just tracking the boxes and logging in the boxes and everything all used to be done manually and now it's being done on computers. Automation is an issue there.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We now know-- I'm talking about the ports, we know what interrupting the supply chains at the ports can do to everyday life because of what happened in the pandemic. I'm curious if that makes a settlement more likely.

Chris Isidore: It certainly puts pressure on both sides to settle. I mean, there hasn't been a strike at the east coast ports in nearly 50 years. '77 was the last one. The two sides often butt heads a lot, and sometimes the union will continue to work, but they'll work closely to rule and slow down the movement of goods over the docks. This time, the union is saying it will walk out if there is no deal. We'll see. October 1st, which is when the strike would start, is a pretty bad time for getting containers full of items bound for retailer shelves at Christmas time in the stores.

Brian Lehrer: One other thing, since you're a business reporter, that I'm going to throw in that's not about labor negotiations or a possible strike. Kind of a corrective to, I guess, something that I said on Tuesday's show when we played this clip of President Biden speaking on Labor Day in Pittsburgh. This is 30 seconds of Biden. Listen to this.

President Biden: I believe in American steel companies, American owned and operated steel companies. A simple reason. It's not hyperbole. American steelworkers are the best steelworkers in the world. I made it clear last time I was in Pittsburgh, United States Steel, an iconic American company for more than a century, is going to remain an American company.

Brian Lehrer: When we played that on Tuesday, I said, "Yes, oops, Nippon just bought US Steel." Now we have in the last day, Biden says he's blocking that deal. He can do that?

Chris Isidore: That deal needs the approval of something called CFIUS, Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. That committee is made up of nothing but cabinet members, so it's not like it's an independent body. They're all people who are part of the Biden administration, so if Biden wants it blocked, it can be blocked. Now, Nippon and US Steel have both indicated that they're going to press to have "the law followed." I imagine it will be a court battle if Biden does take the action.

We reported yesterday after Washington Post report that Biden is preparing to announce, maybe as early as next week, that he's taking this specific action to block the deal. He's been pretty clear on the record that he's opposed to the deal. Harris came out opposed to the deal. Trump is opposed to the deal. Vance was opposed to the deal before he joined the ticket. I mean, it's almost tough. I don't know of any politician, active politician, who's in favor of the deal.

Brian Lehrer: We'll see if the two companies, the American one and the Japanese one, can make it go through anyway. We're going to leave it there with Chris Isidore, senior writer at CNN Business. Except for this, when we were talking about hotel workers before and one of the callers talked about how customers seemed rude even more than before, the pandemic, listener writes, "I used to work at Blockbuster Video back in the day. One night I was venting to my uncle about the customers and he said, 'Customers are the same everywhere you go.' That is so true. It should be mandatory for everyone to work at least one year in customer service to see what it's like."

That's the text that I pulled out of so many that came in backing up, "Oh, my God, people are so rude to people in the service industry all the time." We're going to let that writer get the last word. Chris, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Chris Isidore: Sure.

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