There has never been a major hotel strike in Washington, so the potential impact is difficult to judge. Hanbury noted that the hotels involved in the negotiations include the largest ones, which handle much of the area's convention business, and that fall is the busy season for conventions.
In yesterday's negotiations, the two sides discussed work quality issues. In particular, the union wants to restrict hotels from increasing the workload of employees, such as the number of rooms each maid must clean in a shift.
The sides had not even begun discussing two other areas of disagreement yesterday. The union wants a $1-per-hour annual raise and continued free health insurance for both current and future employees. The hotels want a 30-cent-per-hour annual raise and leeway to charge health insurance premiums for future, but not current, employees.
Also, the two sides have not formally discussed the duration of the contract.
The union seeks a two-year contract so that it will expire in 2006 at the same time as those of hotel workers in New York, Chicago and several other major cities. The union's parent, Unite Here, is betting it will have more leverage to win wages and benefits from major hotel chains if contracts expire in many cities simultaneously.
"It's the gorilla sitting in the front room," Boardman said of the contract's term.
Jonathan Greenbaum, a partner at law firm Nixon Peabody who represents several local hotels not involved in the labor negotiations, said those hotels are generally sanguine about the outcome of the negotiations.
"I don't think the employees will strike over whether the contract is two years or three," he said, noting that in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where hotel contracts similar to those in Washington expired earlier this year, employees have continued working without a new contract rather than striking.
