Jenni Hembree remembers how demanding the guests were when she worked at the Holiday Inn Express in Charlotte, N.C., near Independence Boulevard. One required five towels, four pillows and three blankets for every day of the stay. But what Hembree remembers most is her hourly wage of just $10.
In 2009, the 30-year-old started working second shift at the front desk. In her year there, she received two non-negotiable raises at only 25 cents each. By labor standards in North Carolina, where the median wage is $10.05 an hour for a hotel worker according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it seems Hembree was doing better than her colleagues.
But compared to her counterparts at unionized hotels, Hembree was losing out -- and didn't even know by how much. In Washington, D.C., where many of the larger hotels are unionized, hotel workers earn an average of $14.79 an hour, roughly $5 more than those in North Carolina. Housekeepers in heavily unionized Las Vegas earn $28,550 a year. Charlotte's residents earn about $18,780. Hembree says she thought unionization was a stigma in the South, so she did not question how her earnings could increase if she were in one.
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