NYT: New York City Hotel Workers’ Contract May Grow More Lucrative
Let's see who is the first to say over paid in NYC!
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/nyregion/new-york-city-hotel-workers-contract-may-grow-more-lucrative.html?_r=1
By PATRICK McGEEHANJUNE 10, 2014
Workers may be protesting against low wages all around the country, but unionized hotel employees in New York City are not sharing the pain. They have just been offered an additional series of raises that would lift a maids annual pay to nearly $70,000 in 10 years.
The citys main union of hotel workers already had a comparatively rich contract that runs until mid-2019. But union leaders said Tuesday that they struck a deal late last week to extend that contract for five more years, with fully paid health care and annual raises of $1 an hour.
By the end of it, maids would be earning almost $38 an hour, or more than $68,900 a year, up from about $50,000 now. Such high wages for jobs that do not require any advanced education fly against the prevailing notion that the middle class is shrinking as the citys residents veer toward wealth or poverty.
This keeps our people very much in the middle class, said Peter Ward, president of the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, A.F.L.-C.I.O. He said he believed that this overarching deal was just too good to say no to.
FULL story at link.