Southern California Hotel Workers Are on Strike Against Automated Management
On top of issues like low pay, workers are up against faceless algorithmic management that can punish them for various offenses — including for refusing to cross picket lines. Workers at a hotel in Southern California are on strike against this practice.
Hotel workers and members of UNITE HERE Local 11 on strike in Southern California. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
In early July, Thomas Bradley signed up for a shift at the Laguna Cliffs Marriott Resort & Spa in Orange County, California. He did so via Instawork, an app-based staffing company through which workers can pick up temporary shifts.
Upon arriving at the hotel, Bradley was greeted with a picket line. He hadn’t realized that the permanent workers were on strike; Instawork’s job posting hadn’t mentioned it.
The Laguna Cliffs employees are UNITE HERE Local 11 members, some of the fifteen thousand workers who are negotiating a contract with the Coordinated Bargaining Group, which represents more than sixty properties in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. After the contract expired on June 30, the union initiated a rolling wave of strikes across Southern California on the weekend of July 4. The day Bradley showed up for his shift, the strike had come to Laguna Cliffs.
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