Picket lines these days are a melting pot of Angelenos. That was evident at a July 21 action organized by striking hotel workers, where members of the WGA, SAG-AFTRA, and IATSE joined.
“You may see a handful of unions supporting each other, but you never see this level of support,” says Eric Haywood, a TV writer and WGA board member who attended the event.
As hot labor summer burns on, striking workers from different economic classes and races are coming together in a way that hasn’t been seen in town for decades. It’s driven by a shared fear that working people have no future in LA, as CEO salaries continue to rise and purchasing power shrinks because of inflation.
Eric Haywood’s t-shirt lists a number of unions that have joined together during hot labor summer. Photo by Megan Jamerson/KCRW.
“I think there's only so much you can do to workers before they realize that anything is better than the way that we're being treated,” says Haywood.
The unity comes despite stark differences between Unite Here 11 hotel workers and Hollywood writers. An early career TV writer earns about $100,00 a year on average, according to the WGA, twice the wages hotel workers are on strike to achieve.
Hotel workers have more in common economically with actors guild members, where 87% of members don't bring in the $26,000 a year required to qualify for health insurance, according to SAG-AFTRA.
Sergio Hernandez (left) and Giovanni Amador stand on the picket line in front of the W Hollywood Hotel, after they went on strike July 21. Photo by Megan Jamerson/KCRW.
Sergio Hernandez is an overnight bellhop at the W Hollywood, a Marriott Hotels & Resort property where he’s worked for eight years. He lives with his parents in Inglewood and needs to look for a new place to live, but he says the only thing he can afford in LA is a bunk bed in a crowded apartment.
“We're just asking for the amount of money that it takes to be able to live in the city where our workplace is, and still be able to have savings on the side,” he says.
Giovanni Amador has no trouble making common cause between the hotel and entertainment industries — he’s both an aspiring actor and a front desk agent at the W Hollywood. He says seeing his two worlds come together and combine forces “feels like a revolution in LA.”
While the energy is high on the streets, in fact union participation rates are historically low — only about 16% in California, less than half the rate in the heyday of organized labor in the 1940s and 1950s, says Tobias Higbie, director of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Unionization then was 35%, and it’s at that rate where he says “you start to have an impact on the broader labor market.”
The last time the region saw this level of coordinated union activity across blue and white collar workers was in 1997 when UPS drivers went on strike. Similar to today, a lot of people at the time were struggling to get by and questioning what is fair, and that strike brought the conversation into the public sphere, says Higbie.
The people engaged in today’s labor movement, he says, are talking to people across divisions of race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship.
“They're learning to live and work together in a multiracial democracy, which is really what we sorely need in this country,” says Higbie.