Local 26 members at 10 Boston hotels will hold strike vote on Tuesday
Here’s a typical union tactic: Complain about the members’ pay levels or working conditions, with a goal of engendering the public’s sympathy.
But Brian Lang, president of Unite Here Local 26, is taking a different approach with his union’s latest contract negotiations. Lang knows his members make a decent living wage. He just wants to keep it that way.
Local 26 represents more than 4,000 hotel workers among 27 hotels in the Boston area. Contracts for 24 of those hotels — those within Boston’s city limits — expired at the end of February. So far, Lang says the union has new five-year contracts lined up for workers at 14 of the 24 hotels. He says the contracts’ parameters —such as a 4-percent annual increase in pay — stay the same among all the participating hotels, even though only some are negotiating together as a group.