Congratulations to the newest members of UNITEHERE!—75 housekeepers, front desk attendants and others at the Hilton Boston Downtown whose persistence in the face of management roadblocks resulted in a successful effort to unionize. The workers waged nine months of sit-ins, pickets and talks with Hilton management before formally winning a voice at work Friday.

Mother's Day in California will be extra special this Sunday, as working families, students and elected officials honor mothers by recognizing the role of domestic workers in our households. The events coincide with the launch of video highlighting the work of domestic workers around the state and the need for the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Thousands of hotel workers protested Thursday at Hyatt hotels in nine cities. UNITEHERE! says Hyatt is abusing housekeepers by cutting jobs, replacing experienced employees with minimum wage temporary workers and imposing dangerous workloads on the remaining housekeepers.

After International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested for alleged sexual assault on a Manhattan hotel housekeeper, there was a lot of domestic back-slapping for this country’s superior handling of such cases compared with such European countries as France, where sexual predation often is swept under the rug.