vacant – stock.adobe.com
City lawmakers are moving once again to sell out Gotham, this time to benefit the hotel unions.
A City Council hearing is set for Tuesday on a disastrous bill to force the industry to use more union labor, severely limit outside contracting and plead for renewed licenses to operate every year.
It imposes a raft of other requirements, too — dictating, for instance, the number of security guards, in an attempt to micromanage the hotels based on what benefits their unions.
It’s about as audacious as it gets.
And it’ll sock the whole industry, with unpredictable ripple effects for the entire local economy.
“This is like a nuclear bomb,” rails Hotel Association of New York City head Vijay Dandapani.
He’s right: For hotels, it is.
Yet the industry is a core component of the city’s $60 billion-plus tourism sector, accounting for 150,000-plus jobs, so any new hit is going to hurt all over town.
Just consider how much damage the new rule will do to the hotels alone:
- Many simply won’t be able to afford to meet the bill’s staffing minimums or its requirements that a majority of core employees be covered by a collective-bargaining agreement (i.e., be unionized) and may have to close. Thousands of hotel workers could lose their jobs.
- Yearly license renewals will be held hostage over minor issues, such as insufficient WiFi, making it impossible for some hotels to operate with any certainty about their costs and future prospects. It’s perfect grist for quiet blackmail: Give me what I want, or I’ll gum up your relicensing.
The bill also sets rules for hotel guests (talk about overreach!).
Combine that with the higher rates hotels would need to charge to meet the new mandates, plus a growing shortage of rooms, and you can be sure visitors will be avoiding New York like the plague.
And denying the local economy billions in business activity.
All to pump up union jobs and membership rolls, not to mention union-dues revenue for the bosses.
And at the expense of an industry still struggling to come back from COVID.
With prices pushed up as thousands of rooms have come off the market to house migrants, it’s harder for visitors to find affordable accommodations.
Damage to city tourism in turn harms retailers, cabbies, restaurants — and all their suppliers.
If city lawmakers are so determined to run hotels, they can put up their own money and buy or build some.
Quit bleeding every corner of the private sector that looks like it can’t fight back, or the city will wind up with no private sector at all.