Cambria Hotel Strikers Celebrate Choice Hotels’ Decision to Check Out of 16-Month Hotel Strike

Press Release
Jan. 31, 2020

Contact: 
Elliott Mallen, 312-656-5807, [email protected]
Marcos Feldman, 312-206-3407, [email protected]

Cambria Hotel Strikers Celebrate Choice Hotels’ Decision to Check Out of 16-Month Hotel Strike

Strikers hold picket line ribbon-cutting ceremony as strike continues at the Hotel One Sixty-Six

CHICAGO – Striking hotel workers at the Cambria Chicago Magnificent Mile are celebrating Choice Hotels International’s decision to check out of the hotel’s 16-month-long strike by removing the Cambria brand name from the property. Workers held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the hotel, renamed the “Hotel One Sixty-Six”, on Friday morning.

“Since the strike started, the hotel has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in cancelled business and lost bookings,” said Sam Yolo, a bellman at the One Sixty-Six. “Who can blame Choice Hotels for checking out?”

Fillmore Hospitality, the hotel’s operator, refuses to sign a new contract without increasing workload for hotel housekeepers, a demand not agreed to at any hotel where workers walked out on strike in 2018.

“Why does Fillmore keep trying to put more and more work on us housekeepers?” asked Yolanda Garduño, a room attendant at the One Sixty-Six. “This is one sick, sick hotel.”

Hotel workers have been on strike since September 10, 2018. Originally part of 2018’s citywide hotel strike, the One Sixty-Six is the only remaining hotel on strike. The hotel is owned by the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System.

More information about the strike is available at www.Hotel166MagMileStrike.org.

UNITE HERE Local 1 represents over 15,000 hospitality and food service workers in the City of Chicago and surrounding area.