March 13—ALBANY—The new owners of a financially troubled State Street hotel are already getting a taste of Albany politics: A threatened boycott by at least three dozen state lawmakers upset with the way the new owners have been treating workers.
Corning-based Visions Hotels bought 74 State in January for $3.8 million and closed its restaurant and bar, making the decision to run it as a “limited service” hotel like the rest of the company’s holdings around the state.
But according to a letter signed by a bipartisan group of members of the state Assembly and Senate, the sale was also accompanied by staff cuts and a refusal by the new owners to recognize the employees’ existing union contract.
In the letter to Visions Hotels’ head of corporate human resources, the lawmakers lay out a stark ultimatum: They won’t be back until the ownership deals with the union, the Hotel & Motel Trades Council.
The council says 20 people have lost their jobs under the new management, which it says has recognized the union but not the workers’ labor contract.
“This is not a matter of politics,” the letter reads. “Your behavior reflects poorly on the hotel and the city and we will certainly not patronize such an establishment until you have properly worked things out with the union and addressed the problems in a humane and equitable manner.”
One of just two hotels on State Street, 74 State is about a block and a half below the Capitol, where hundreds of out-of-town lawmakers and staffers spend several days a week for six months of the year. Out-of-town lawmakers are eligible for $172 per-diem payment of taxpayer money to spend on food and lodging.
The hotel is also not far from the proposed site of the new downtown convention center, which will rise at the corner of Howard and Eagle streets.
Not surprisingly, most of the lawmakers who have signed on to the letter are Democrats. The state Democratic Committee has received at least $70,000 in political contributions from the council since 2010.
“It’s long overdue for management to come to the table and negotiate a fair deal—in good faith—that works for everyone,” said union spokesman James Freedland.
Among the local signatories to the letter are Sens. Neil Breslin and Cecilia Tkaczyk and Assembly members Phil Steck and John T. McDonald III.
The union’s campaign is reminiscent of a bitter months-long boycott that it waged against The Desmond Hotel & Conference Center in Colonie in 2012. That dispute ended in September of that year when workers there ratified a new contract.
Calls to Visions Hotels Tuesday and Wednesday were not returned.
74 State opened as a high-end boutique hotel in 2007 and swiftly ran into financial trouble—in part due to an investment by corrupt brokerage firm McGinn, Smith & Co. The property landed in foreclosure in 2012.
jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com, 518-454-5445, @JCEvangelist_TU