Workers at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City File for Union Election

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Associations/Press
Workers at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City File for Union Election

7/15/2024
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA - After over 70% of them signed union authorization cards, housekeepers at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City filed for a union election on Friday. Hyatt workers are organizing for respect on the job, higher pay and benefits, and fair workloads. The workers are organizing with UNITE HERE Local 25, which represents 6,500 hospitality workers in Virginia, D.C., and Maryland.

“I am responsible for cleaning spaces over 14 floors of the hotel during a single shift,” said Aymane Mokrane, a Houseperson at the hotel. “One day recently I was so tired I slept on the floor after getting home, I couldn’t even make it to my bed. We need the same union protections as workers at the Hyatt Regency in Washington have.”

The Federal Government is a major customer of the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, and has spent over $4 million at the hotel in the past ten years. Federal customers of the hotel include the Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Labor, with multiple branches of the military using the hotel for meetings monthly. Other non-union Hyatt hotels in the D.C.-area area are also used regularly by the federal government, like the Hyatt Regency Bethesda, which is frequently used for conferences by NIH and other federal health agencies.

“A supermajority of housekeepers at the Hyatt Crystal City have spoken loud and clear, and they want a union,” said Paul Schwalb, Executive Secretary-Treasurer of UNITE HERE Local 25. “Their work is exhausting and even painful. They deserve the standards, rights, respect, wages and benefits that union hotel workers in D.C.’s Hyatts have won.”

Local 25 has filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against Hyatt and its subcontractor J&B Cleaning over the use of non-compete policies which bar employees from working at Hyatt for a year if they leave or are terminated from J&B. A second charge filed by the Union alleges that management at the Grand Hyatt D.C. illegally surveilled Hyatt and J&B workers. As the worker organizing spreads from the Hyatt Crystal City and the Grand Hyatt D.C. and workers begin to organize at the Park Hyatt, Hyatt Regency Tysons, Hyatt Regency Reston, Hyatt Regency Dulles, Hyatt Centric Arlington and Hyatt Regency Bethesda, federal employees may be forced to choose whether to cross picket lines late in a tense political cycle.

The Hyatt Crystal City is jointly owned by Hyatt and the Gould Property Company, a powerful local development group.

The Hyatt organizing drive comes amidst a wave of new hotel organizing in the D.C. region and a historic contract victory for union D.C. hotel workers. Just last week, housekeepers at the Royal Sonesta Dupont Circle won union recognition. Last month, D.C. hotel workers overwhelmingly ratified a new contract that will see wages increase to $33 an hour by 2028, protect workers’ free health insurance, increase pension benefits, and preserve good, pre-pandemic working conditions.

UNITE HERE Local 25 is a hospitality workers union that represents 6,500 workers in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Local 25 members are primarily immigrants and women of color.

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