Nordic Campaign: #FairHousekeeping

Fair Housekeeping campaign: 9-15 October 2017

The Nordic hotel and restaurant unions have been active participants in the Global hotel housekeeper campaign since the IUF launched the campaign in 2015, but over the past three years NU HRCT and its affiliates have been coordinating their campaign in whole Nordic region under the slogan #FairHousekeeping.

The Nordic #FairHouskeeping campaign has been versatile with several of goals;

• Improve working conditions

• Recruit and organize members

• Raise awareness among general public, hotel guests, union members and politician

• Strengthen cooperation with employers

• Raise the status of hotel housekeeper

The Nordic unions have produced various type of promotional material, such as videos, brochures, banners, t-shirts, social media graphics and Facebook page. All to increase visibility and get their message across to hotel housekeeper, members, employers, hotel guests and the general public through various actions and workplace visits.


The Nordic union have conducted health and safety surveys among members and worked closely with occupational health and safety institutions, and various research institutions in order to gather evidence on the immense workload, stress and dangerous attributes of the hotel housekeeping occupation. All surveys and research the Nordic unions have initiated have shown that hotel housekeeping is one of the most difficult occupation around, which frequently leads to disabilities, burn-out and other illnesses.

Number of small and large victories

The global housekeeping campaign has been a success and the Nordic hotel and restaurant unions have made progress and achievements since the campaign started. 

The most important victory is at the collective bargaining front and the increased focus on the poor working conditions among hotel housekeepers. In the last 12 months the issue of hotel housekeepers has been raised in national collective negotiations in Denmark and Sweden resulting in serious discussions between the unions and employers on how to improve the working condition of this vulnerable group of workers. These discussions are likely to be extended to other Nordic countries in the near future and should lead to new clauses in the national collective agreements in the Nordic countries.  

The Nordic hotel and restaurant unions have also seen an increased membership among hotel housekeepers, better union representation at many hotels, better cooperation at workplaces, new training and education offerings, and major steps from large Nordic hotel chains such as Scandic and Nordic Choice towards insourcing of hotel housekeeping.

Time to evaluate and decide upon next steps

After this year’s hotel housekeeper’s week of action, the Nordic Union of hotel, restaurant, catering and tourism workers plan to organize a conference for hotel housekeepers and union representatives to evaluate the campaign, highlight the victories, build networks and decide on future strategies.