Hilton hotel workers in Orlando score wage increases, job protections in new union contract

After roughly a full year of contract talks and several rallies to publicize workers’ demands, hundreds of employees at Hilton’s Buena Vista Palace hotel have approved a new union contract that will deliver increased job protections as well as immediate pay raises.

UNITE HERE Local 737, a hospitality union representing 19,000 service and hospitality workers in Central Florida, announced the news of the new contract on social media Thursday. The union represents over 300 housekeepers, bartenders, pool attendants, food service workers, and other employees of Hilton Buena Vista Palace near Disney Springs and the Hilton-owned DoubleTree Universal near the Universal Orlando resort.

The hotel workers’ most recent four-year union contract expired Dec. 31, 2024. Hilton — a global hospitality company worth billions — and the union, however, failed to reach agreement on key items of negotiation ahead of its expiration, including pay rates, retirement benefits and healthcare costs.

Workers spoke out about how Hilton’s pay rates, for instance, paled in comparison to those at Disney-owned hotels, where workers are also unionized with UNITE HERE. Housekeepers at Hilton Buena Vista Palace, for instance, were earning $16 an hour under their old union contract, compared to $22 an hour at unionized Disney World resort hotels.

“The pay for right now is very low compared to what’s comparable to the other restaurants, or just the quick service that’s around in this area,” Amanda Garcia, a food service worker at the hotel, previously told Orlando Weekly. “We’re like, almost $5 off compared to other hotels, even another Hilton across the street,” she said.

According to Local 737, workers under the new union contract will receive “huge” wage increases, lower medical costs under their insurance plan, a new dental plan mostly paid for by the employer for the first time, a lower workload for housekeepers (who face greater risks of overwork and injury with higher mandated workloads) and 20 percent automatic gratuities on all guest checks for servers and bartenders at the hotel’s Shades and Sunnies dining options.

Minimum wage rates for housekeepers will rise from $16 an hour to $21 an hour immediately, a union rep confirmed, and reach $24 an hour by June 2028. The lowest-pay job classifications at the hotel, meanwhile, will see an immediate pay increase from $14.50 an hour to $17 an hour, and a minimum wage of $20 in June 2028. Some workers will see a $10-per-hour increase to their pay over that same time, the union rep noted.

The contract was approved by union members with 97 percent of approval from those who voted.

Protections for immigrant workers

Even more timely are increased job protections in the new union contract for immigrant workers at Hilton, according to the union. The hospitality industry is one of the largest employers of immigrant workers in the U.S., alongside employers in agriculture and construction.

Many immigrant workers laboring in Central Florida’s tourism industry are Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders from countries like Haiti who are now facing deportation threats from the Trump administration. The 32BJ SEIU, another labor union that represents Haitian TPS holders, has joined a lawsuit filed against the administration over its decision to strip TPS status from more than 200,000 Haitian immigrants.

TPS is a temporary immigration status program extended to individuals from foreign countries that are suffering from an ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or “other extraordinary and temporary conditions,” according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Those with TPS are given work permits and are temporarily protected from deportation.

“I filed this lawsuit not just for myself and my wife, but for hundreds of thousands of my fellow Haitians here on TPS whose lives would be upended,” said Gerald Michaud, a TPS holder, union member and plaintiff in the lawsuit. Michaud received TPS status in 2010 after a devastating earthquake in his home country.

Although an exemption for deportation efforts of certain TPS and undocumented workers was recently floated for the hotel, restaurant and agricultural industries, the Trump administration quickly abandoned the idea, with federal officials split on it.

The new contract at Hilton Buena Vista Palace includes contract language that will ensure that no immigrant worker will lose their job without the opportunity to resolve paperwork issues, attend immigration proceedings and appeal their status. It also allows that, if an employee leaves their job due to a loss of work authorization, they can return to work at the hotel if they regain proof of work authorization within two years.

Union members will receive a paid day off for swearing in as a U.S. citizen under the contract. Other guarantees include unpaid days off for immigration proceedings, the right to language assistance in grievance meetings and the right to speak their chosen language in conversation with each other.

A long time coming

Local hotel workers began contract talks with Hilton last year with goals to raise minimum wage standards, reduce housekeepers’ workload, fight for a good pension plan that allows older workers to retire with dignity, secure more affordable health insurance coverage and end what they describe as an exploitative ploy to replace full-time union jobs with non-union temp jobs. Workers previously said this had become more common since the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving in-house staff to train the endless cycles of co-workers who came in (without additional pay, no less).

According to Local 737, the new union contract at Hilton Buena Vista Palace includes some protections against this, too, ensuring more union-covered jobs and fewer temp jobs to replace them.

Over the course of the last year, as contract negotiations dragged on with insufficient progress at the bargaining table, the union organized several rallies near the hotel, in order to raise awareness of their fight — and the importance of raising standards for hospitality workers industry- and region-wide.

They were joined at times by allies with other unions, such as the United Auto Workers and American Federation of Government Employees, as well as Central Florida Jobs with Justice and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, who recently held a conference at Buena Vista Palace last month and joined the workers’ rally in solidarity.

Hilton Hotels, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new collective bargaining agreement at their Disney-adjacent hotel. Hilton owns 24 global lodging and hotel brands, with more than 8,600 properties across 139 countries and territories. Several Hilton-owned hotels in the U.S., outside of Florida, are similarly unionized.

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This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2025.