By: Ethan Shen

As the price of living in Southern California continues to rise, many hotel workers feel that their pay is inadequate compensation for their long hours. Thousands of hotel workers walked off the job in Los Angeles last Sunday to get higher pay and more benefits.

This strike is part of many others taking place in Los Angeles. “All we do in hotels is work and work and get by with very little,” said Ms. Rios-Sanchez, a hotel worker. “We take care of the tourists, but no one takes care of us.” She lives with her three children in a one-bedroom apartment in El Sereno, a neighborhood at the outskirts of the city.

There have been multiple contracts and deals made to stave off the walkout of the workers. Keith Grossman, a spokesman for the coordinated bargaining group consisting of more than 40 Los Angeles and Orange County hotels said in the statement that the hotels had offered to increase pay for housekeepers currently making $25 an hour in Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles to more than $31 per hour by January 2027. These agreements will set pay levels ahead of the 2026 Olympics, in which tourism is predicted to spike.