Reprinted from SAMUEL (Scripture and Mission: A United Church of Christ Electronic Library)
If you have recently stayed in a major hotel, you know that the rooms have become extraordinarily luxurious. A down comforter, five or six down pillows, and an extra-soft mattress cover have become standard features. The rooms invite sweet dreams for the guests, but are a nightmare for the housekeepers who clean them each day.
The "amenities arms race," as the competition for comfort in hotel rooms is called, has dramatically increased the housekeeping staff's work load and injury rate. Since 2002, when the battle of the beds began, the incidence of arm, shoulder, and lower-back injuries has skyrocketed. Still, most housekeepers do not receive health insurance from their employer, and their pay averages only slightly more than $17,000 a year.
So what's a hard-working housekeeper to do? Many are finding the best way to gain a greater voice on the job, higher pay, and even health insurance is to join a union.
In Las Vegas, nearly 90 percent of workers in the major hotels belong to a union, the result of years of struggle by thousands of activists. Concern and love for each other–what unions call solidarity–was fundamental to this success. During a six-year strike involving 550 workers in one hotel, not one crossed the picket line. Furthermore, their union sisters and brothers working in other hotels voted to increase their own union dues in order to provide financial support to the striking workers who were not receiving a paycheck.
As a result, in Las Vegas today, hotel workers earn a living wage. They own homes, receive family health insurance, a pension, and paid vacations. Does any worker deserve less than this?
Participating in a union can be a way for workers to gain dignity and a fair share of the resources that God generously provides for all of us. When we actively support workers' rights to organize, we are "doers of the word, and not merely hearers" of God's message to love our neighbors, especially those on the economic margins of society.
Edith Rasell
Justice and Witness Ministries
United Church of Christ
