This evening’s picket is the second demonstration to be held by Unite members at the Village Hotel, following three weeks of strike action in August.

The August pickets marked the first hotel strike in Britain since 1979, and ended after staff accepted a 10% pay rise backdated to April, a £400 pay-out to workers over 21 and the removal of zero-hour contracts. Village Hotel refused a pay rise to workers under 21 that would equalise wages across all ages. Most of the striking workers were between 18-25 years-old. 

Stella Small, the lead representative in the franchised Starbucks branch, said: “Despite the union victories over the summer, the Village Hotel continues to prove it does not value its workers.

“Village Hotel made £260 million last year and yet, in Starbucks and the Pub & Grill, the wage is still divided by age, with the highest earning hospitality workers still not earning what the government considers to be the real living wage.”

Striking workers are demanding the real living wage for all employees, equal pay for younger colleagues, taxi fares for late and unsafe shifts, trade union recognition, and correct overtime payments for workers in the Starbucks branch.

Small said “the Village benefits from Starbucks’ existing customer base” yet “they pay their workers the lowest wage out of any franchised Starbucks”.

An organiser for the Glasgow branch of Unite hospitality, Yana Petticrew, said between 90 to 95% of workers across Starbucks and the Pub & Grill restaurant are trade union members, “a couple” of whom are new joiners. Through this action, they hope to “grow through other departments, really targeting housekeeping, the gym and reception”.

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Daniel Friel, Unite’s national convenor for the Village Hotel, echoed Petticrew’s ambitions to grow the strike, highlighting “two more Village Hotels in Leeds planning on taking industrial action” with the same mandate as workers in Glasgow.

Friel also acknowledged workers from Vue cinema in the St Enoch centre, who recently announced four weeks of demonstrations from December 11 until January 7. Some of the cinema workers were in attendance on Friday.

Workers held a banner which read: “The great thing about being with Blackstone is that money is not a problem.”

The quote is attributed to the Village Hotel chief executive Gary Davis and references the hotel’s parent company, Blackstone, an American private equity firm which acquired the business in 2024 and reported revenues of $13.23bn in the same year.

Calling out Davis directly, Friel said: “We want Gary to put to Blackstone that the staff outside on the picket line are themselves a good investment.”

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Emma Donnelly, campaigns officer and women’s officer for the Glasgow branch of Unite hospitality, said the hotel workers are “demanding bare minimum conditions that a lot of people in other industries don’t need to worry about”. She said she had noticed a tendency among hospitality workers to be complacent, “lie down to poor conditions and accept negative treatment”.

Donnelly hopes that this industrial action will prove to other hospitality workers that “you don’t need to give everything to a job that gives nothing back”. She added: “Hopefully what we’re doing here is going to inspire more people to do the same.”

The Village Hotel in Glasgow has been approached for comment.