Leaflet distributed by IWG members and sympathizers to workers on strike at the Hilton-Americas in Houston, Texas.

When the Hilton Americas management walked out of months of contract negotiations, they demonstrated a complete lack of interest in the lives and conditions of the Hilton workers. Hilton aims to maximize their profit through increasing the exploitation of their workers, and in response to this blatant antagonism from the Hilton company, workers across the hotel have justly bound together to fight for their ability to survive. As the working class continues to face worsening conditions under capitalism, we must be able to move beyond a defensive struggle and toward a system of production organized by workers-- a system that fulfills human needs instead of chasing ever-dwindling profits.

Inflation rates have remained high for years now, and they have only continued to rise as a result of increasingly aggressive tariff policies and ballooning government spending, manifesting as real wage cuts for the working class. This July, for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, there were more unemployed people than job positions available in the economy, giving the owners of industry the opportunity to keep wages down with the confidence that positions will be filled no matter how pitiful the wage. These factors and more continue to degrade the standard of living for U.S. workers and the global working class as a whole. Contributing to our class's worsening conditions, Hilton America has repeatedly rejected workers’ demands for higher wages, standing strong in their “need” to profit. In recent negotiations, their bargaining unit suggested a raise of less than $2 an hour and an insulting 50¢ increase over 5 years, a number that is below a standard 5% inflation.

The reason for this is clear: Hilton benefits from state policies like inflation to cut real wages, making ever-expanding sums of money off of the hard work you do. When the company has you do a few minutes of work for them on event days, you get a handful of change. Meanwhile, they sell your service to guests for hundreds of dollars an hour, and in one case, a dozen cookies for more than $70! Even considering the costs of materials and maintenance of machinery represented by that $70, Hilton Worldwide Holdings made $10 BILLION in profit (not revenue!) this past year while its employees struggle to find ways to pay their bills. When inflation rises, Hilton profits, and its employees suffer. Inflation is not just a tool that Hilton Americas exclusively uses; capitalists around the world act in similar fashion to extract more value out of your work for less pay.

It’s for this same reason that Hilton won’t give you the hours that you need or allow you to make your schedule more than a few days in advance. The primary goal of management is to ensure that your hard effort makes as much money for the company as possible in the amount of time you’re scheduled to work. So, management pushes you to finish more work in less time. By dumping a disproportionate workload on you, Hilton only pays you for 20 hours or less a week to create the same amount of value you might have made in 30-40 hours before. This is why Hilton refuses to change the hours you receive from the off-season to the on-season. There is a greater workload (and so a greater value produced for the company) represented in the same amount of hours in the on-season than the off-season, yet the pay is identical. It’s no wonder, then, that the workers of the Hilton Americas feel so disrespected by management and the bosses!

The workers, who actually run the hotel and provide the services it has available, use their labor to extract surplus value for the Hilton company as a condition of their employment, the same employment without which they might literally starve. This separation of interests between the working class and the capitalist class cannot be effectively resisted, let alone reconciled, by Local 23 or any other union struggle. The strike clauses, found in 94% of CBAs, prohibit workers from striking even if our conditions demand it and instead make us wait for contracts to end to even get a chance to further the fight to better them. By organizing along trade lines, unions divide up the working class between individual workplaces and job sectors, dashing chances of making strikes stronger through incorporating more workers into the ranks of the strike. And through contract negotiations, union bargaining staff acts as a co-manager of the working class, removing the workers from the active process of consolidating our shared demands and forcing a contract that compromises with the bosses so that the paid union members can get off the picket lines and go back to the office. Unions are incapable of combatting the miserable conditions put upon us by the capitalist class, and only working class self-activity can properly defend our class position and push beyond the wages system to create a society that actually meets our needs.

In pursuit of this, meet together with other workers to discuss your interests, demands, and opinions about the labor struggle, outside of union channels. By forming committees and collaborating directly with your fellow workers, even those in other firms, you can expand your numbers and demands outside of those represented by the union, increasing the power of the strike. These direct associations of workers allow the wider class to defend our collective interests beyond limited reforms, forwarding the movement to end the conditions of our exploitation. To extend the struggle, look to make connections with workers in other hotel workplaces, other sectors of the economy, and even other parts of the world, all facing the same struggles against the bosses as you do, and work together with them just as you would with those in your workplace, to forward those goals of the class as a whole. For the workers this struggle is one of survival; for the bosses this is a barrier to their profits. Rather than stop at wage increases or “better contracts,” a united working class with its own political party and a shared political program for our emancipation can forward its struggle to abolish the wages system and liberate the workers from the capitalist system that benefits from our suffering.