America’s hospitality workers had it tough in 2020. Covid triggered mass layoffs and many wondered when – and even if – the industry would recover. But the turmoil didn’t stop the industry’s largest union from pulling off one of the most successful voter drives of the election.

As the 2024 election cycle gets into full swing, Unite Here is hoping to do the same again, and this time the stakes may be even higher.

The union represents 300,000 hospitality and food service workers and has just elected its first female president. Gwen Mills took over as interim president upon president Donald “D” Taylor’s retirement in March 2024 and was formally elected last month to lead the union.

Mills previously served as secretary treasurer of Unite Here since 2017, where she designed Unite Here’s Take Back 2020 campaign, a canvassing operation of more than 1,700 union members in swing states such as Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Florida. Before that, she served as Unite Here’s political director from 2015 to 2017 after spending 15 years as a community organizer and political director for Unite Here affiliates in the New Haven, Connecticut, area.

The campaign in 2020 reached over 3 million voters, including 125,000 infrequent voters in Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania who were reported to have not voted in 2016, bolstering Biden’s margin of victory in Arizona and Nevada.

Mills explained that the 2020 election was a difficult time for the union and its members, as more than 90% of the union’s membership faced layoffs or furloughs due to the Covid-19 pandemic and other labor unions and Democratic party political campaigns, including the Biden campaign, suspended their door knocking operations due to Covid-19.

“We had an internal discussion within the union and decided that what was at stake with Trump being in office and what that was doing to our union and members’ lives, we had to do something,” said Mills. “Canvassing is essential work, democracy is essential work. We asked our members if they were willing to go out and take risks to get out to the election and they were. Winning that election, it was amazing, within days the American Rescue Plan, Cobra was extended, the child care tax credit was extended, so people had a direct impact from that election in their pocketbooks, so that’s all that came to be.”

Unite Here also led a canvassing operation during the 2022 elections with 1,200 canvassers knocking on 2.7m doors in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia. The union characterized their canvassers as the Democratic party’s “secret weapon” in their efforts to retake the Senate majority in Georgia’s special elections runoffs in January 2021.

Now the union is looking to the 2024 election after it endorsed Biden for re-election in June 2023.

“The divide is so stark. It feels like the entire landscape for us is, are we going to be able to stay on offense and focus on organizing non-union workers, negotiating good contracts, building the labor movement or, with Trump, are we going to be on complete defense?” said Mills.

She cited Project 2025 – a blueprint for action drawn up by conservatives for a second Trump presidency – and the attacks on the labor movement, immigrants, people of color, and women that those policies would be pushed and enacted under another Trump presidency.

“It’s a fundamental landscape question, can we keep being focused on offense and building?” asked Mills. “Or do we have Trump just absolutely going on the attack?”

Mills applauded the Biden administration’s recent unveiling of an immigration executive action to extend citizenship to undocumented spouses, which could impact 500,000 immigrants. She also noted on abortion rights, the overturning of Roe v Wade in 2022 has galvanized many members in wanting to get involved in canvassing operations as they see it as an important economic issue impacting them and their loved ones.

“All of that is up in the air,” added Mills.

Unite Here is also looking ahead as 40,000 union members in the US and Canada are fighting for strong, new union contracts this year and Mills wants to boost union organizing of new members to expand on their already diverse membership that predominantly consists of women and people of color.

These efforts come as the hospitality industry has been restructuring and has been using the Covid-19 pandemic to lower labor costs and increase profits by eliminating services such as daily room cleanings in hotels.

“What’s happening to the workers is the jobs are getting combined, workloads are getting bigger, rooms are getting dirtier to clean, its harder on the body. People don’t think about it, but 80% of our housekeepers are on some kind of pain medication,” concluded Mills. “People travel to be taken care of. That’s what our members do, we take care of people when they travel. It’s largely seen as women’s work, maybe that’s a reason its undervalued, but we’re going to stand up, fight back, push back and say these have to be good, quality jobs.”

Expanding its membership in the face of growing opposition from business and a potential Trump presidency is Mill’s top priority, she said.

“We have a great standard for the members that are in our union, but there are millions of non-union hospitality workers in the US and Canada that are without a union contract,” continued Mills. “That’s absolutely our top priority. I want to double the amount of money we invest in that part of our work, and have more of our members involved in talking to non-union workers and backing this sort of spirit of unionization that’s happening, backing workers that are deciding to stand up and say ‘enough is enough.’”