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Essex House Workers Stage Protest During Sean Penn's Movie Shoot

Where: 160 Central Park S [map], New York, NY, United States, 10019

Well, this is sort of awkward timing for everyone: yesterday, workers at the Jumeirah Essex House on Central Park South (non-front-deskers, that is) staged a protest to call attention to "what they said was the hotel's failure to pay its banquet-room staff nearly $2 million in tips."

According to the New York Times, hotel workers in uniform stopped work entirely and "filled the hotel’s lobby with more than 100 red-frocked chambermaids, toque-topped kitchen workers and banquet waiters, casually chatting among themselves." A few feet away, Sean Penn and a film crew were filming a scene for an upcoming movie (we assume it was Fair Game with Naomi Watts). Yeah, kind of uncomfortable timing.

Per the Times:

...The strike was called to protest what the union said was the hotel's failure to heed an arbitrator's ruling in 2007.

The ruling required New York City hotels, bound by the union’s collective bargaining agreement, to pay their banquet-hall employees what amounted to millions of dollars in tips that the arbitrator said the hotels had improperly calculated since 2003.

Fortunately, the protest was peaceful enough that the film shoot wasn't disturbed (good thing; wouldn't want anyone going on Christian Bale on the set) and, even more fortunately, the dispute between the hotel and its workers will be settled by an independent arbitrator on Thursday.

[Photo: Patrick Andrade / New York Times]

Tags: Fashion Week Hotels / Cynthia Rowley / Hotel Fashion Shows / Sean MacPherson / Hotel Protests / → All Tags

'Slumlord Fashion' at The Jane NYC

Where: 113 Jane Street [map], New York, NY, United States, 10014

Today, we really wish that we could have brought you some stunning pictures of Cynthia Rowley's fashion show being held inside of the The Jane's revamped ballroom, but being on the list doesn't mean anything if the show is overfilled, and so we ended up just kicking it with the protestors across the street.

While the fashion types made the trek down from the Bryant Park tents to the far West Village for the show and queued up in the cold wind, a few Jane residents and their supporters held signs to draw attention to their position in the conversion of the property from SRO residency to hotel. In fact, a few of the signs were quite catchy, such as "are bed bugs the new black?"

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