The ruthless Hotel & Gaming Trades Council union’s campaign to essentially seize control of embattled Big Apple hotels also threatens to destroy one of the city’s precious resources: high-end restaurants in hotels that are run by professional outside operators.
The radical, union-backed measure in the City Council includes provisions that would likely shut down hotel-based eateries run by such prominent chefs as Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Andrew Carmellini and Wolfgang Puck.
The sneak attack was accurately likened by Hotel Association of New York president Vijay Dandapani to a “nuclear bomb” dropped on an industry still struggling to recoup pandemic-era losses.
But in addition to subjecting hotels to absurd annual license-renewal requirements and city “safety” regulations dictated by the union, the bill?would also bring to an end to a golden age of great places to eat and drink within hotel walls.
The impact on restaurants was largely overlooked when the scheme was first announced last week.
But Andrew Rigie of the New York Hospitality Alliance warned that it also poses an “existential threat” to restaurants and would “essentially terminate countless leases and management agreements between third-party food and beverage companies and the hotels in which they operate.”
The Council bill would give the union something that’s been on its wishlist for years: a requirement that hotels “directly employ all core and critical employees” in the city’s 700-odd hotels, employing 265,000 workers.
In other words, no more “third-party” outside contractors, and an immediate increase to the already bloated union rolls.
The union lacked council support until now.
This year, like a security guard who takes a cut to wink at a shoplifter invasion, the body threw up its hands and said, “Take anything you want!”
“Critical employees” as defined in the bill include all staff involved in food preparation.
And while the rule wouldn’t explicitly apply to independently run restaurants, there’s a lethal, giant catch.
It would place under union control all “commercial businesses” that provide public access — that is, a door or entryway — to the hotels in which they’re located.
The problem is, nearly all of the city’s hotel-based eateries that are leased to or managed by outsiders are physically connected to the hotels. Some sit smack in the middle of their lobbies.
Under the proposed rules, those restaurants and bars could no longer be run by outside companies that know the business, but by clueless hotel “food and beverage” managers.
Chefs, cooks, managers, waiters and dishwashers would become hotel employees covered by the unaffordable straitjacket of the union contract.
The loss of independent hotel-based restaurants would lead to the loss of thousands of non-union jobs — which the union couldn’t care less about.
It would also spell doom for such marvelous eateries as Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s flagship at the Trump International Hotel, Daniel Boulud’s Le Gratin at the Beekman, Andrew Carmellini’s Cafe Carmellini at the Fifth Avenue Hotel and Jose Andres’ Zaytinya and Bazaar at the Ritz Carlton Nomad — among dozens more.
Why would any respected chef or restaurateur want to lend their names to venues over which they have no control?
Julie Menin, the normally moderate City Council member sponsoring the legislation, scheduled a July 29 public hearing on it with only a few days’ notice.
The timing took hotel and restaurant owners by surprise.
The hearing, which must precede a vote, could have led to the bill being rammed through in August — when few New Yorkers would be paying attention. It had more than enough votes to pass in the 51-member council.
The ploy fortunately caught the attention of the hotel and restaurant industries and the Real Estate Board of New York just in time.
They threatened to rally against it at Menin’s hearing — which she promptly postponed until mid-October for further “negotiation.”
It’s a relief that Menin, who’s usually less radical than her progressive peers, back-pedaled for now.
But it’s appalling that the ruinous measure got as far as it did — and that it could still squeak through in some form.
The council’s hard left turn knows no turning back.