CHICAGO _ As a downtown hotel strike entered its fourth day Monday, some guests reported dirty rooms and check-in delays, while some managers pitched in to keep operations running.
Kristian Hulgard, in town from Dallas for the International Manufacturing Technology Show, said it took him eight hours to check into his room at the Palmer House Hilton. The hotel offered drinks and food to compensate for the trouble, but once he did get in, around midnight, he found that the room had not been cleaned.
"All in all, it's not that big a deal," Hulgard said Monday morning as he waited outside the Loop hotel to board a bus that would take him and his colleagues to McCormick Place for the convention, which brought 114,000 people to the city this week. "But when you've paid $300 a night, you want something like that to work, of course."
Guests have to help themselves to clean towels on carts in the hallways, and everything is taking longer, such as the breakfast line, he said. Another conventioneer waiting for the bus said there were people serving breakfast who clearly had never worked as servers before.
Thousands of housekeepers, doormen, cooks and other hotel employees have been on strike since early Friday morning at 25 downtown hotels as they negotiate new contracts.
Their union, UNITE HERE Local 1, called the strike a week after contracts at 30 hotels expired Aug. 31, though it had been warning of a strike for weeks before. About 6,000 workers are covered by the expired contracts.
The Hilton did not respond to a request for comment Monday. On Friday, the hotel chain said the strike would have "minimal impact" on operations.
In addition to the Palmer House, which has more than 1,600 guest rooms, the Hilton hotels where workers are striking include the DoubleTree Magnificent Mile, Hilton Chicago and the Drake hotel. "We are negotiating with the union in good faith and are confident that we will reach an agreement that is fair to our valued team members and to our hotels," Paul Ades, senior vice president for labor relations at Hilton, said in an emailed statement last week.
The union said workers will be walking picket lines around-the-clock at all the affected hotels until their demand for year-round health insurance is met.
At the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza in the River North neighborhood, management has been pitching in with everything from room cleaning to bellhop services, minimizing disruption to guests, said Dale McFarland, the hotel's general manager. McFarland himself spent Sunday changing sheets, taking out trash and making sure rooms were fully stocked with soap, shampoo and glasses.
"We had some temp help come in and our managers have pitched in and we just had to roll up our sleeves and do what we had to do to get the job done," McFarland said Monday.
The strike forced the hotel to "tweak" some amenities, such as curtailing hours at its grab-and-go market and going with buffet-only service at the main restaurant. But McFarland said the hotel has been fully operational for the most part, and that guests have been checking in and getting their rooms with minimal disruption.
McFarland said he supports his employees' decision to strike but hopes for a quick resolution.
"We want our people back," McFarland said. "They're a big part of what we do, they mean a lot to us and that's what we're working towards."
Brian Edwards, 54, a former Chicagoan who now lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., drove up to Madison, Wis., Friday with his partner, Anita Prins, and another couple, to attend the Wisconsin-New Mexico college football game Saturday afternoon.
The couples had prepaid for rooms at the Palmer House in Chicago Saturday night, but when they arrived at about 7 p.m., they were surprised to find a couple of dozen strikers "marching and banging drums," and no room at the inn.
The strikers "politely" parted to let the couples make their way inside, Edwards said, but the reception at the front desk was less accommodating, with no clean rooms available because of the workers' strike. He said the clerk offered to text them when the rooms were ready, but couldn't promise a time.
"She said it could be midnight, it could be not at all," Edwards said. "We just decided to pack it up and drive back to Grand Rapids."
Larry Lewis, 39, who has worked as a houseman at the Palmer House for 18 years, said he has been picketing every day since the strike began to demand year-round health insurance. When the hotels get slow, typically from October through March, many employees get laid off and lose their health insurance until they return to work when the weather warms.
"If you're a diabetic, how are you supposed to get your medicine?" he said.
Lewis said he is prepared to strike for as long as it takes.
"If I had to be out here 20 years until they get it right, I don't care," said Lewis, a strike captain. "If you look around and you see these people with me, it's nonstop. They're going to have get it right or we'll be out here."
