Echoes of the 1930s: Today’s Hotel Workers Lead the Struggle to ‘Upgrade’ the Service Economy

The organizing struggles of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s and 1940s contributed significantly to transforming work and life for industrial workers and their communities by creating the means to bargain for better wages and working conditions. Now, in the first decade of the 21st century, North American hotel workers can honourably make a claim to being the legitimate heirs of this history as they struggle to transform the quality of work and life in the service economy.