Contract for New York's Hotel Union Is Seen by Some as Special Case By summer 2018, thousands of people who spend their days changing sheets and towels in hotel rooms across New York City could be the envy of the blue-collar world, earning nearly $60,000 a year with a promise of full medical benefits for their families and pensions when they retire. The proposed labor contract covering 30,000 members of the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, A.F.L.-C.I.O., is so beneficial to workers that it seems born from a different era. Wages would rise by more than 29 percent over the next seven years. A housekeeper, now making a little more than $25 an hour, would have her annual pay rise to $59,823 in mid-2018. She would continue to receive full medical, dental and eye-care benefits, and her employer's contribution to her pension would rise each year. Officials of other unions enviously dismissed the proposed contract as a special case that was not likely to be replicated in the private sector anytime soon. Still, some of them wondered, how were those terms even on the table in an era of dwindling union clout, frozen pensions and unpaid furloughs? The simple answer was emblazoned on flashing billboards surrounding Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in Times Square two months ago. Record numbers of tourists have flocked to New York - more than 50 million last year, the mayor said - filling its growing list of hotels at higher and higher tariffs. Last year, the average hotel in Manhattan charged $275 a night and filled 85 percent of its available rooms, according to data compiled by PKF Consulting USA. In other words, the typical hotel room in Manhattan brought in more than $85,000 last year, before its occupants spent an additional dollar on room service or on souvenirs in the lobby gift shop. "They know the industry's doing very well and has for the last two or three years," said James Parrott, chief economist for the pro-union Fiscal Policy Institute, referring to the council's leaders. Still, he added, the negotiation that led to the proposed deal was "not influenced by the broader currents at work in the economy that have been bearing down on both business and labor, particularly labor." Another factor is that health-care costs, the bugaboo of most labor negotiations, was not at issue here. Officials of the hotel union say their costs are held down because they provide care through four clinics that the union and the association jointly operate. The union's members go to those clinics - two in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn and one in Queens - for their basic medical, dental and optical services. By comparison, the union representing the workers who clean offices throughout the city, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, ratified a contract last month that was not as rich. The office workers, who make about $2 an hour less than hotel housekeepers now, accepted wage increases of just 5.6 percent over four years. By the last year of that contract, the office workers will be earning about $4.50 an hour less than the housekeepers, though they also receive health coverage with no out-of-pocket costs. The hotel contract is more in line with the last contract the New York Police Department worked out with the city; it called for annual raises of 4 percent for each of its four years. Under that contract, the base pay of a police officer with two years on the job is only about $2,000 more than a housekeeper makes. But the police pay rises at a much faster rate as an officer gains experience, while the hotel workers earn the same hourly rate regardless of long they have worked. John Turchiano, a spokesman for the hotel union, said the housekeepers, who clean 12 to 14 rooms a day, were "the backbone of our union," making up about half of the employees of the hotels. The proposed contract, he said, "allows many of our members to afford to live in the city where they work." Though there has not been a citywide strike by hotel workers in 25 years, officials of the city's hotel industry seemed pleased to have come to terms with the union with minimal animosity. The president of the hotel association, Joseph E. Spinnato, said the terms were in line with those the workers had previously received. "Historically, the contracts have provided fully paid medical benefits and have set forth periodic increases in the contributions that hotels make to the pensions," Mr. Spinnato said. The contract, already approved by the Hotel Association of New York City, is expected to be ratified by the union members on Monday. Mr. Parrott, while acknowledging how well the hotel workers fared, said he hoped that the proposed deal was not an anomaly but a herald of better prospects for workers in other industries. "Maybe that's a leading indicator for the economy, that things are improving," he said, sounding as if he was trying to convince himself.