Hotel Union’s Double Standards Exposed by Safe Hotel Act

The Hotel Trades Council is seeking to mandate all city hotels to use union-only labor, prohibiting outside contracting, despite the union itself spending millions on outsourced services each year, including non-union firms.

Over the past decade, the HTC has allocated more than $700,000 in contracts for maintenance and cleaning services, along with millions for legal, consultant, and computer services.

City Councilwoman Julie Menin and the HTC advocate for the unionization bill under the guise of curbing criminal behavior such as sex trafficking, hence the deceptive title, the “Safe Hotel Act.”

Menin claims an increase in hotel-related 311 calls (not 911) signals a safety concern, yet the American Hotel and Lodging Association notes that most of these complaints are related to issues like illegal parking, noise, dumping, elevator outages, blocked driveways, and homelessness.

Forcing non-union hotels in the city to surrender workforce management to the HTC would not address these issues.

However, this move would result in some owners closing down and lead to higher lodging prices in NYC, already one of the nation’s most expensive cities for hotel rooms (second only to Boston).

This would further harm a tourism industry already impacted by the city’s real crime crisis and COVID lockdowns.

The bill jeopardizes the city’s economy and caters solely to a special interest group, placing all hotels in the city under the control of one union.

Ironically, this union fails to adhere to the same rule it seeks to enforce on the industry.