Workers picket outside of the Hilton Americas-Houston to demand higher wages on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025.
Hundreds of hotel staff at the Hilton Americas-Houston continued their strike on Tuesday in demand of higher wages.
What’s planned as a nine-day strike began on Monday, Labor Day, after the Hilton workers’ contract expired earlier this year. According to UNITE HERE Local 23, a union that represents Houston hospitality workers, the hotel staff had been in negotiations for a new contract with Hilton since the previous contract expired June 30, but they’ve yet to come to an agreement. The workers are calling for at least $23 per hour, “fair schedules, fair workloads, and respect.”
Bill Guillen said he’s been an employee at the downtown Hilton location for 21 years and currently works in the hotel’s Private Branch Exchange system — the internal phone network that allows guests to communicate with hotel staff. He said this is the first time he’s ever gone on strike.
“The reason I’m doing it is because I make $16.50 an hour. It’s not enough to pay my bills,” he said. “I’m always calling one creditor to pay another. … I have utilities I have to pay. I have to pay a mortgage. Everything is going up. The cost of living is so high.”
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Guillen said he last received a raise during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and that since then, the hotel has not agreed to a new contract.
“We’re trying to work with the company as much as we can,” he said. “We’ve had different negotiation bargaining sessions, and they just haven’t met our demands.”
A Hilton spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday that the company respects its employees’ “right to express their points of view.”
“We remain committed to negotiating in good faith to reach a fair and reasonable agreement that is beneficial to both our valued Team Members and to the hotel,” the spokesperson said.
In a Monday statement announcing the strike, UNITE HERE Local 23 Texas Chapter President Franchesca Caraballo said workers deserve to benefit from the increase in profits that Houston-area hotels have seen over the past year.
“Workers have decided to make the ultimate sacrifice by striking this Labor Day because one job should be enough to live on in Houston,” Caraballo said. “For far too long, working people have had to struggle to make it, and the workers at the Hilton Americas-Houston are no exception. Workers are on strike to send the message that they are not backing down in their demand for at least $23 an hour.”
According to data from the Houston First Corporation, a marketing arm of the city government, Houston hotels experienced a 7.7% increase in occupancy and a 15.5% increase in revenue in 2024. However, as of July 2025, Houston’s hotel revenue was down 28.9% so far this year, according to Houston First.
The strike is set to end Sept. 10, and Guillen said he and his fellow workers plan to continue to hold a picket line outside the Hilton’s front lobby until then, if their demands are not met.
“I’m disabled, I’m totally blind and I’ve been doing my job [for] 21 years the best I can,” he said. “I’m a different kind of worker, but at the end of the day, I’m a worker just like all those folks over there, and what affects them affects me. I just want a fair contract, and we’re willing to sit down with the company again.”
