Ex-employees of Rose Lane and supporters rally outside Park Lane Hotel on Sept. 13. (Credit: Hikari Mae Hida)
On the 47th floor of the Park Lane Hotel, the workers at Darling Rooftop used to make French 75 cocktails while overlooking the south side of Central Park. Glamorous celebrity guests and tourists treated themselves to $165 Ossetra caviar and flutes of Veuve Clicquot champagne, while workers earned generous tips throughout the night. The rooftop calls itself “the crown jewel of Manhattan’s nightlife scene.”
Downstairs in the same building, workers at Rose Lane — a cafe and bar nestled in the back corner of the lobby — served $12 beers and $24 pizzas to hotel guests and whoever else strolled in for a quick drink or bite. Pedestrians going from 58th to 59th Streets would rush past the circular tables lining the entrance. With inconsistent business, employees say they saw their hours get cut and breaks get taken away. As managers made them feel expendable, they filed to unionize.
A few days later, both worlds came crashing down together when they were all fired from their jobs.
“We were honestly shocked,” said Mikey Castignoli, a bartender at Darling Rooftop who worked at the bar since it opened in 2022. “At first, I didn’t know what happened.”
There is now a great deal of tension between workers at the two establishments, whose employees had little contact with each other before the firings and who haven’t been in touch with each other since they were let go, according to the workers.
“I don’t know anybody up there,” said Tom Hawks, a former Rose Lane bartender who helped start the effort to unionize. “It was managed completely differently, it just happened to be in the same building.”
These employees, who were hired through The Goodkind Group, LLC, a staffing agency, were notified of their dismissal on Aug. 25. Columbia News Service contacted 10 former Rose Lane and Darling employees for this article. (Some declined to comment or to be named because they fear the hotel will not hire them back. Others are looking for new jobs.)
Roughly two dozen workers at each place were let go. Darling workers said they were not notified of the Rose Lane unionization effort in advance and never wanted to unionize in the first place.
“We were always treated very loyally and did not have much reason to unionize,” said one Darling employee. “We were unnecessarily harmed by their actions.”
Several Darling workers described their situation as “collateral damage.”
“We all hate them right now for sure,” said one. The downstairs unionization effort “feels disingenuous and greedy,” said another.
“I am deeply sorry that they lost their jobs, that was never the intention,” said Hawks, the Rose Lane bartender. “But I didn’t ever think to approach them because we were completely separate outlets.”
Eric Schmidt, an organizer with the volunteer-run Restaurant Workers Union that supported the Rose Lane workers’ organizing efforts, said the upstairs workers’ “resentment is misdirected.”
“It’s the Park Lane Hotel who shamefully fired them,” he said, adding, “in any union campaign before you go public, you would never tell people in a different restaurant.”
Dee Zanardi, director of operations at Goodkind, declined to comment when reached by phone. Steven Porzio, Park Lane Hotel’s legal representative, and Michael Manjon, a manager at Rose Lane, did not respond to email or phone requests for comment.
Both Rose Lane and Darling Rooftop have been closed for evening service since Aug. 25. Union workers cover breakfast shifts at Darling Rooftop, available only for hotel guests.
Other employees at Park Lane are unionized with the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council (HTC), Local 6, representing roughly 40,000 hospitality workers in New York and New Jersey.
HTC declined to comment on why Rose Lane and Darling Rooftop are not included in their union.
Rose Lane workers said they wanted to unionize because they were often shortchanged on hours or faced having their tips withheld by management. It was a different world upstairs, where Darling workers said they used to receive comped meals for family members while high-profile guests such as Red Sox ballplayers and actors from shows such as “Breaking Bad” made appearances. One worker was angry about missing out on New York’s recent Fashion Week, when affluent guests filled the upstairs terrace.
Darling workers said that their tips ranged from a few hundred dollars up to $1,500 per night. A job advertisement posted in the beginning of August said that tips average $300 per night.
Meanwhile, workers at Rose Lane were aware of the disparate working conditions and told management in April, according to emails reviewed by Columbia News Service. “Why are we being treated so unfairly when we all work for the same company?” wrote a Rose Lane worker to the staffing agency.
The dispute has also taken a toll on customers. Some of them have recently posted on Google and Reddit to complain about last-minute reservation cancellations at Darling Rooftop, with some reporting they weren’t notified until the day before, or at all. New York City regulations require hotels to “quickly notify guests of service disruptions” and ensure that they “not impose any fee” for cancellations prior to arrival.
It is still possible to book a table at the bars even while the website has a pop-up stating that the two establishments are “temporarily closed for evening service.” In September, a guest-services representative in the lobby of the Park Lane Hotel told Columbia News Service that reservations could still be made at the closed restaurants due to a “glitch in the system.”
Naoki Fujita, a union attorney who filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board, said that the NLRB tends to “prioritize cases where people are fired.” He added that when a worker is dismissed for union organizing, they are “entitled to back pay and reinstatement.” The case is currently halted due to the federal government shutdown.
According to a July article in The Real Deal, the Qatar Investment Authority, which acquired the hotel in 2023, is moving ahead with plans to redevelop Park Lane into “a five-star hotel, hotel condos and residences.”
Of the dismissed Rose Lane workers, some have filed for unemployment benefits as they look for new work, while others are picking up more shifts at their second jobs. Meanwhile, many Darling Rooftop workers are holding on in hopes that they will be rehired.
“I miss working there,” said Castignoli, the bartender at Darling.
Weeks after their dismissal, a small number of former Rose Lane employees and their supporters continue to rally outside the Park Lane Hotel, their chants punctuated by the blare of neon green plastic vuvuzelas, demanding to be heard.
Notably missing is any sign of their upstairs neighbors.