Ex-employees of the Surrey Hotel are suing Reuben Brothers and Corinthia to get their jobs back.
Two employees, Donna McCammon and Vanessa Garcia, filed a lawsuit alleging that when Reuben Brothers bought the then-closed hotel in 2020, they were required under city law to offer jobs to workers who had been displaced. The lawsuit seeks to have their jobs reinstated as well as possible back pay or other damages.
The complaint hinges on the Displaced Hotel Service Workers Act, which Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law in September 2020. Under the measure, when a hotel is sold or there is otherwise a change in the controlling interest, the new owners must offer employment to hotel service workers who have worked at the hotel in the year leading up to the change.
The employees are to be retained for 90 days, and if their work is satisfactory, kept on after that.
In March 2020, the hotel closed, and all workers were laid off. Shortly after, it filed for bankruptcy when the ground lease holder, Ashkenazy Acquisitions, filed for Chapter 11 after the hotel’s operator missed payments, Bloomberg reported at the time. Reuben Brothers paid $150 million for the hotel in December 2020. The business officially reopened in October 2024 as a 100-key hotel with 14 condo units on the top floors.
The Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which pushed for the 2020 city law, repeatedly notified the hotel operator, Corinthia, of its obligation to offer employment to the laid-off workers, according to the lawsuit.
“Rather than doing the right thing in bringing back the workforce, they completely ignored repeated requests to bring those people back,” Rich Maroko, president of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, said in an interview.
“The union is going to keep fighting for its members until they get their jobs back,” he said.
Donna McCammon, one of the plaintiffs, said she had worked at the hotel for close to 20 years before losing her job in 2020. She said that the union helped her find a new job, but she and other long-term employees are hopeful to return to the Surrey.
“They can’t just let us go like that. We’re human beings,” she said.
The lawsuit is part of a broader battle the union is waging against the Surrey. In January, the union filed a charge against the hotel with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging it failed to rehire employees because of their involvement with the union — though it is unclear how grievances like this will fare under the Trump administration’s shakeup of the NLRB.
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Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the mayor who signed the Displaced Hotel Service Workers Act into law. It was Mayor Bill de Blasio.