NYC Hotel Union Deal Averts World Cup Strike, Housekeepers to Earn $100K+

A deal between a New York hotel union and a hospitality industry group will boost the earnings of hotel housekeepers to more than $100,000 as part of a pact to avoid threatened strike action during the FIFA World Cup beginning in June, union officials said Monday.

The eight-year contract agreement between the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, representing 27,000 hotel workers, and the Hotel Association of New York City, which represents 250 hotels, establishes 50% wage raises along with free family healthcare, increased pension contributions, new benefit funds and expanded rights at work, union officials said.

The terms of the deal were announced on the same day that unions representing Long Island railroad workers called off a strike that had for three days crippled the rail transport system into the city.

The hotel workers’ deal will raise housekeepers’ pay from nearly $40 an hour to more than $61 hourly over eight years.

“Wage increases were our primary focus in this contract cycle because the cost of living for our members has been increasing so dramatically,” the union’s president, Rich Maroko, told the New York Times.

The hotel association’s president, Vijay Dandapani, said in a statement to the Guardian that his group was “proud the New York hotel industry will continue to provide the best pay and benefits in the country”.

But Dandapani also cautioned that the group’s members are facing “tremendous economic headwinds” and exceptionally high taxes. He said 20,000 hotel rooms had been lost since the Covid-19 pandemic, and demand has not fully recovered.

Anticipated demand for hotel rooms for the World Cup has failed to materialize. Data from the commercial real estate company CoStar shows that bookings at many hotels in the New York City area are only about one-third filled, or nearly 12% below levels in 2025.

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani said recently that soccer fans may be waiting until second round matchups are finalized.

Eight games are scheduled for the area, including the final, at New Jersey’s MetLife stadium.

A pressure group, fifahotelstrike.org, had warned that the hotel workers union’s existing contract was set to expire midway through the games. It spoke of “a distinct possibility that there will be strikes, pickets, and lockouts at some [New York City] hotels during the 2026 FIFA World Cup”.

The group invited supporters to pledge: “If workers go on strike or call for a boycott, I will not eat, sleep, or meet at the hotel. Under [city] 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.”

After the contract deal was announced, Mamdani said in a statement that it “is a win for our hospitality industry, our economy and for a city that works best when the people who keep it running can afford to live here, too”.

Beyond staving off threatened strike action during the World Cup, the hoteliers union deal has raised concerns that New York City hotel room rates will need to rise to offset higher labor costs.

According to CoStar, New York City has the highest average room rates of any major US city, at about $335 a night. New York City, however, also has the nation’s highest occupancy rate.