Seattle hotel workers enter their 2nd month on strike

Seattle, WA – On Saturday, August 15, dozens gathered outside Embassy Suites Hotel to picket in support of hotel workers with UNITE HERE Local 8. The workers have been negotiating their contract for six months and have been on strike for 59 days.

The strike began on June 12 after Embassy Suites repeatedly failed to meet workers’ demands, which included year-round healthcare, higher wage increases and protection from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The organizers of the picket said that negotiations with the company have been difficult and unproductive.

“Unfortunately, the hotel did not engage in good faith negotiations with the staff,” said Gabe Rubliovschi, a hotel worker at Embassy Suites and organizer with Unite Here Local 8, “12 days into the strike, they came to the table with the exact same offer of a 40-cent increase over the next six months.”

Many UNITE HERE hotel workers across the country went on strike in 2024 and won between $9 and $10 raises over a contract period of four years. The Embassy Suites workers’ wage demands are in line with other unionized hotels in the area.

Hayden Eyerly, a front desk agent with Embassy Suites, confirmed the story, saying that the company, “called us back to the negotiation table on day 12, and we were expecting a new offer of some sort. But they were assuming we’d have a new offer ready, when our response to their previous offer was to go on strike! So, it was a big waste of time, but it made it a whole lot easier to come back out here and yell at them.”

“As someone who started working here before the pandemic, we’ve seen staffing levels cut in half from what they used to be,” said Jus Adsuara, a Local 8 Vice President and hotel worker. “I’m doing twice as much work compared to before the pandemic, but my wage definitely hasn’t doubled.”

Staffing at hotels nationwide has not returned to its pre-pandemic levels. Additionally, Seattle’s hospitality industry is reeling from decreases in Canadian travelers, some of which have been attributed to Trump’s oppressive immigration policies.

Adsuara further explained, “We are really concerned about the presence of ICE in our city, and we want the right to be notified and the right to stay home if ICE is near the building.”

One-third of hotel workers nationally are immigrants; about 3 million immigrants work in hospitality. Hotel workers in Minneapolis have won protections from ICE, which Embassy Suites workers look to as an example.

As cries of “If we don’t get no contract, you won’t get no sleep” echoed throughout the picket, Jus had one more message for management: “We’ll be out here as long as it takes. We’ve said that from the very beginning, and we really mean it.”

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