By Herbert White for the Charlotte Post, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for North Carolina News Service reporting for the Charlotte Post-Public News Service Collaboration.

The hospitality industry quickly became hostile in Duane Hoskins’ estimation.
Over eight months as a shuttle driver at Cambria Suites and Hotel in Morrisville, Hoskins said he witnessed first-hand mistreatment by management, including unwarranted firings, low pay, racist language and unsafe conditions including flooding due to a broken water pipe that closed the hotel for three days because of health hazards.

It was time to respond.

“It’s the majority of the staff, and we’re all in agreement of the unfair treatment, unfair wages going on at Cambria Suites,” he said. “Also, it’s not a healthy work environment.”

Cambria Suites’ workers – members of the Union of Southern Service Workers – walked off the job on Feb. 20. A contingent of hotel workers and their union colleagues rallied at the Cambria property near Raleigh-Durham International Airport, chanting “Cambria, you’re no good! Treat your workers like you should!”

Strikes like the one at Cambria are taking place more regularly in the South as a combination of post-covid economics and worker activism are bringing more people to unions. Black workers are taking a more pronounced role in organizing and leadership as they confront generations of inequity that left them lagging many of the white peers.

At last year’s launch of the region-specific USSW, founding members outlined demands they’ll make of service employers across the South, which include:

   • Participation in making decisions about working conditions, corporate accountability for worker treatment and respect their right to organize without retaliation
   • Fair pay and an end to wage theft
   • Equal treatment, including pay equity for all workers, protection from discrimination and harassment
   • Healthcare benefits, sick leave and safe workplace protections and equipment
   • Fair and consistent scheduling, including the ability to work full time hours with safe staffing levels, and regular weekly schedules. 

‘I needed to speak up’

USSW’s demands are in line with the Cambria workers’ priorities.

“We’re paid minimum wage, and our checks come up short,” Hoskins said. “I had a couple of people telling me that they are getting less money this week than they did on the previous check and their checks keep going down. One guy [went] from getting like $1,200 to $1,000 a week because he’s full time and working overtime to now … getting about $800, and they didn’t want to pay his (personal time off) when he came back. He only got a $200 check and honestly, that's absurd.

“When I looked at my pay history, the amounts had been declining, not my hours. I thought that to be a situation that I needed to speak up.” Worker awareness and willingness to push for change is good, said MaryBe McMillan, president of the North Carolina AFL-CIO, which represents 100,000 members in industries ranging from delivery truck drivers to professional athletes.

“Among workers generally right now, we see a lot more interest in organizing,” she said. “After the pandemic, working people are tired of being taken for granted after they risked their own health and safety to make sure that everybody had the food, the medication, the products that we needed during the pandemic. Certainly, a lot of the organizing that we see in the South is being led by workers of color, particularly women of color and younger workers, especially in the service sector.”

Fight for $15 and respect

Service workers nationally have engaged through the Fight for $15 and a Union movement over the last decade, which has resulted in higher pay and improved workplace conditions. But gains have been slower in the South, where major corporations continue to pay low wages and retaliate against workers who make demands, while piling up record profits.

More than 40% of the country is on a path to a $15 an hour minimum wage, but most southern states maintain the federal $7.25 minimum. Preemptive laws make it almost impossible for Southern municipalities to raise pay for workers, continuing a racist legacy that has defined the workplace for generations.

For example, when Birmingham, Ala., city council passed a $10.10 hourly minimum wage in 2016, white Alabama lawmakers blocked the increase, leaving workers in the majority-Black city stuck at $7.25.

The Cambria workers also walked out to protest the firing of colleagues without explanation. On Valentine’s Day, two employees were called into the office and fired at the same time, with no reason given. Their colleagues allege a workplace where verbal abuse by management is commonplace, including calling Black men “boy.”

“When they fired us, they fired the only two black women with power in the hotel. I’m speaking out because of the unfair treatment of Cambria,” said Bobbie Fuller, a former housekeeping manager at Cambria and one of the fired workers. “I took my job very seriously, and I care about my coworkers. We took care of each other, we ate together. The housekeepers cried when we walked out the door.”

Cambria’s workforce situation is a sample of an issue U.S. hotels face. According to a survey by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, 79% of hotels face staffing shortages, which is forcing them to lure potential hires with incentives to fill job vacancies.

Seventy-one percent of respondents said they are increasing wages, 64% are offering flexible hours, and 33% are expanding benefits. The most critical staffing need is housekeeping, with 43% ranking it as their top hiring need.

“Recruiting enough workers continues to be the top challenge for many hoteliers, and this is leading to historic career opportunities for hotel employees,” AHLA President and CEO Chip Rogers said in a statement. “AHLA and the AHLA Foundation are working tirelessly to grow the industry’s talent pipeline and retain workers through innovative events like National Hotel Employee Day and compelling ad campaigns like ‘A Place to Stay,’ but there is still more to be done.”

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, hotel employment is down by more than 250,000 jobs compared to February 2020 when the hospitality industry started to shut down due to the pandemic. Nearly 100,000 industry jobs are open nationally, AHLA reports and as of December, the national average for hotel wages topped $23 an hour – the highest ever.

The pandemic gave American workers a sense of their importance to the economy, and by extension breathed new life into the southern labor movement, McMillan said. With national unemployment at a record-low 3.4%, the post-pandemic dynamic between workers and management is likely to continue.

“I think the tight labor market works to workers’ advantage in terms of the leverage that they have to demand better pay and better benefits,” she said. “The wages have not kept pace with inflation and certainly the minimum wage has not been raised in over a decade, so a lot of these wage increases are long overdue. And given the rising costs and inflation, even with rising wages, working people are still struggling to make ends meet.”

Breaking stereotypes

American history and culture, with few exceptions, paint a picture of labor organizers as white men willing to go toe-to-toe with corporate power through strikes that at times turn violent. Although unions are responsible for many of the advances that benefit U.S. workers in law and practice, there’s a perception of that unions are obsolete or rabble-rousers that drag down the economy.

In an America still dealing with the upheavals of a pandemic and racial reckoning, a new generation of labor advocates are advancing. Naomi Harris of Columbia, S.C., a USSW co-founder, is 21 and knew little about the history of Black organizers. It didn’t stop her from calling the service industry to account.

“I didn’t really know too much about it because I thought unions [were] something that you just heard about. You’d never really see them. Nobody talks about them, so I just thought it was like little old folk selling something from back in the day that stayed back in the day. The one thing I really love about this union is that we don’t see color. We’re an anti-racial union.”

That multidimensional membership and leadership model, McMillan asserts, is where future labor movements will draw strength.

“I think that the younger generation is less willing to settle for the wages and lack of respect and poor benefits,” she said. “But when I think about the Fight for $15 movement, you really see multi-generations in that movement from older women who have been working in fast food for their whole careers standing alongside younger workers who don’t like the fact that employers are discriminating against the LGBT community [or] are trying to tell folks they can’t wear certain things in the workplace.

“I think there’s all kinds of different reasons that workers come to the movement and to this place where they've had enough.”

Like Hoskins, the Cambria shuttle driver, who says his colleagues will continue with their demands until a deal is struck.

“I’m thankful for the union and the support that they have given us thus far,” he said. “They’ve been really strong. They’ve encouraged us to a point where we’re not really worried. We feel as though the union has our back 100% so that it doesn’t appear that it’s just in house issue. It’s an issue with all service workers.”

A bill vetoed by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin would have raised the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour starting in 2026.

While the bill moved out of committee and the General Assembly, it did so on party-line votes. Youngkin opposed the bill, saying it could hurt small businesses and some restaurants.

Jay Speer, executive director of the Virginia Poverty Law Center, said it was disappointing to see the measure vetoed.

"Wages are way too low. People cannot afford housing and food and everything else," Speer pointed out. "It's a disappointment that they can't raise the minimum wage so people can survive. I mean, it's long overdue."

Passing the bill was part of a 2020 minimum-wage increase requiring a reauthorization to bring it up to $15. A state study found a person has to make at least $14.55 an hour to afford the cheapest place to live while only spending one-third of his or her income on housing. The current minimum wage in Virginia is $12 an hour, but around 500,000 Virginians make $12 or less.

Youngkin also vetoed a bill ending exemptions from Virginia's minimum-wage requirements for farmworkers or temporary foreign workers.

Kim Bobo, executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center on Public Policy, said it was not as impactful since most farmworkers make more than the minimum wage. But she said the exemption remains for another reason.

"The only reason farmworkers continue to be exempted in Virginia is racism," Bobo contended. "That's why they're exempted. And, we should just change that, like there's no reason not to. It really does not affect that many workers in Virginia."

Youngkin and other legislators with a farming background said the bill would hinder farmers' ability to turn a profit.

New York restaurant workers need to know their rights to better navigate their workplaces. A new report finds high rates of what it calls "occupational segregation" in the restaurant industry, which can relegate some people to lower-paying jobs.

Workers' rights organizations are counteracting this with training programs. Alima Iskakova, a server for Exquisite Staffing, a catering company, said the CHOW training from Restaurant Opportunities Centers United is helping her.

"Since I completed this training course, I am more confident when it comes to job interviews," she said. "I am more confident - like, when it comes to these types of interviews, plus with all my experience and the knowledge that I got from ROC United, I have a higher income."

She was also trained in safe food handling, OSHA certification and other need-to-know information about the restaurant industry. These courses are available in several cities beyond New York.

The report also notes that, unlike training offered by organizations such as the National Restaurant Association, these courses prioritize developing restaurant workers' power to support individual career development.

The report says racism and sexism abound in the restaurant industry. White men make up a majority of higher-earning positions, such as bartenders.

Although these training courses are helpful, Iskakova noteed that not knowing English can be a disadvantage. She said other cultural differences can make this work challenging.

"In the hospitality industry, even like when people come here as an immigrant, they don't know the rules, they don't know the laws," she said. "And ROC United, they help us to do the cover letter, resume. There are certain things - like, there is a difference."

Another challenge she encountered was the difference between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Iskakova said her work has been interesting, but she's got ambitions outside of food service. Along with photography, she's a communications major at CUNY.


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With the help of federal aid, Wisconsin is catching up to neighboring states in accelerating clean energy construction projects and the Badger State is taking things a step further by giving union workers greater access to these job opportunities.

Four major utilities operating in Wisconsin recently announced a pledge to hire union workers for clean energy development tied to federal incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Kent Miller, president and business manager of the Wisconsin Laborers' District Council, said it paves the way for a smoother transition to more wind, solar and similar projects.

"With the commitment from the utilities to make sure that the wages and benefits are the same standard as legacy energy, it allows workers to focus on updating their skill sets to meet the needs of the projects, and not worry about, 'Are there concessions in wages and benefits?'" Miller explained.

In earlier phases of renewable energy construction, Miller noted some project leaders focused on bringing in out-of-state, nonunion contractors. As Wisconsin labor organizations now have a seat at the table, Miller stressed the next challenge is getting more advance notice before a project breaks ground, so they ramp up recruiting well ahead of time.

For example, Miller pointed out a utility-scale solar development requires a lot of labor and they want as many people as possible to know about potential openings. He added it includes apprenticeships.

"Somebody could start their apprenticeship career, complete their apprenticeship and become a journey worker through the duration of a utility-scale solar project," Miller stated.

He pointed to the Paris Solar Farm project in Kenosha County, which at its peak, had nearly 150 laborers. Of the apprentices, 70% were women or people of color.

Analysts said the hiring pledge and associated projects could lead to nearly 19,000 construction jobs with prevailing wages.


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