Hotel maids in NYC already out-earn rookie cops, firefighters and even teachers with master’s degrees — and they just got a raise.
The Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the union representing 22,000 city hotel workers, ratified the new contract Thursday that will bring housekeepers to $77,113 on July 1 with $110,000 in salary alone in the sixth year.
The agreement made last weekend with the hotel owners averted a strike that was already throwing a wrench into the city’s America 250 celebrations and the FIFA World Cup as visitors said they were afraid to make reservations if a strike was at hand.
Under the new contract, hotel guests will absorb some higher costs, as automatic tips will rise from 15% to 20% this year for group meals and banquets and group porterage.
“We started negotiations at $40 per hour,” one hotel owner on the bargaining committee told the Post, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisals. “The person who cleans your room will be making more than school teachers and policemen.”
Housekeepers — called “room attendants” by the union — currently take home $72,000 a year — with some topping $100,000. On July 1, they will start at $77,113.
By contrast, a new NYPD officer earns $60,884. A rookie firefighter makes $54,122 — and even after five years on the job, a smoke-eater’s salary is still $74,998. Teachers with a master’s degree start at $77,455.
Factor in benefits and the true cost to hotel owners will now be $107,958 per employee annually, according to the Hotel Association of New York — and then rise to about $154,000 per year by the eighth year.
Housekeepers already have as much as five weeks’ vacation, plus sick days and holidays while benefits add 66% percent to hotel costs. For every dollar paid to the worker, the hotel owners contribute towards medical and pension benefits, along with legal, payroll taxes, Social Security and Medicare. The new contract also adds Juneteenth as a holiday.
Last year, after a concerted campaign by the union to prepare for a possible strike this summer, Albany hiked unemployment benefits, cutting the waiting period to one or two weeks and boosting the payout by 72.42% — from $504 a week to $869. It was the largest single increase in state history, according to the union.
Meanwhile, porters in privately owned residential buildings just got a 3% raise, to start at $32 per hour and while the new contract with LIRR workers gave them a 4.5% raise, hotel workers currently start at $40 per hour, with the new pact lifting pay to over $61 per hour by 2034.
Already, 18 hotels have closed since COVID at a loss of over 6,000 jobs and dropping union membership from 30,000 to around 22,000, with over half of them room attendants.
Hotel Association President Vijay Dandipani noted in a video posted on July 24, 2024 on the Hotel and Gaming Trades’ Facebook that union president Rich Maroko “points to the current contract as being `the gold standard’ with the best protections.”
They now have a platinum contract.
“The cost of operating a hotel has gone up every year since 2012 and operating income has dropped to the single digits,” Dandapani told the Post. “If you are in the super luxury [class] you are all right, otherwise you are struggling in the city.”
The Iran war and higher fuel prices have already put a damper on international travel to the city, while FIFA was supposed to elevate those numbers, reservations have been tepid with the union’s strike threats alarming potential travelers.
Along with warning FIFA visitors of the “distinct possibility” of strikes, pickets and lockouts during the World Cup, the union’s fifahotelstrike.org website asked supporters to sign a statement that said: “If workers go on strike or call for a boycott, I will not eat, sleep, or meet at the hotel.
Under NYC law, guests have the right to cancel their reservations and get a full refund in the event of a strike, and I commit to exercise that right.”
In preparing for a potential strike, the union also expected socialist Mayor Mamdani to have its back after flipping its financial and door-knocking support in February 2025 from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to then-Assemblyman Mamdani for mayor.
Mamdani, who didn’t respond to a request for comment by The Post, reportedly called the contract “a win for our hospitality industry, our economy and for a city.”
