When Anbang Insurance Group Co (安邦保險集團) bought the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for US$1.95 billion this year, the Chinese firm said it planned to convert part of the aging building into high-end condominiums, while maintaining a smaller five-star hotel.
Standing in its way were the hotel’s 1,221 union workers, whose jobs were protected by the Waldorf Astoria’s contract with the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, a union that represents hotel workers.
Now, the owners of the Waldorf, New York’s largest union hotel employer, have reached a record deal with the union in which the hotel could pay almost US$149 million in severance packages to its employees over the next two years.
The average payout will be more than US$142,000, with a handful of employees eligible for more than US$300,000. One longtime worker is walking away with US$656,409.68.
“It is a great deal,” said Peter Ward, head of the trades council. “There are people of retirement age, hundreds of them, that are getting over US$200,000 in severance.”
Edgar Infante, 53, a head room-service waiter who has worked at the hotel for 22 years, is one of them.
“It will never be the same again,” Infante said. “When Frank Sinatra was alive he would ask me always for a Jack Daniels with a splash of Evian. Later in his life, when he got sickly, it was an Evian with a splash of Jack.”
Former US president Bill Clinton knows Infante by name and in Infante’s basement at home he keeps a Waldorf menu signed by Clinton and former US president George H.W. Bush when the two met at the Waldorf after Hurricane Katrina.
Under the terms of the deal, employees will receive 29 days of pay per year they worked, or 58 days if they are tipped employees. The typical severance package is just four days of pay per year, or eight days for tipped employees.
“In terms of days of pay, this is the largest severance package that we have negotiated in the history of the union,” said Richard Maroko, the union’s general counsel.
The trade council negotiated with Hilton Worldwide, which operates the Waldorf, and the Blackstone Group, which owns 46 percent of the hotel chain, over several months this spring. (Hilton will continue to operate the Waldorf in a 100-year agreement it signed with the new owner.)
As the negotiations were occurring, a bill backed by the union was making its way through the city council that would have placed a moratorium on hotel-to-condominium conversions like the one the Waldorf is planning.
Last month, the council approved the legislation, placing a two-year ban on owners of Manhattan hotels with at least 150 rooms from converting more than 20 percent to condominiums, but hotels that had been purchased in the previous 24 months and where the buyers had expressed an intent to convert were exempt, including the Waldorf.
Employees have three choices: take their severance now and stop working within 60 days; take part of their severance now, but continue working for two years or until the hotel closes, whichever comes first, and then receive the rest of the severance; or continue working until the hotel closes, then take the smaller, traditional union severance and go on a rehire list.
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