The noise is constant.
It is deafening.
And it shows no sign of letting up.
Union Square residents say they’re losing patience with a hotel strike whose picketers cause a ruckus every day from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. in the dense retail district.
Workers from seven hotels have been picketing for nearly three months, banging metal drums and shouting through bullhorns, and will likely continue into the new year in their fight for better wages and benefits, according to a spokesperson for Unite Here Local 2.
That has left locals exasperated.
“I want to support what they’re doing,” said Camille Green, who lives a block from the striking Grand Hyatt and Marriott Union Square hotels. “I totally understand. But at the same time, it just feels unfair to the neighborhood that we’ve been kind of caught in the crossfire.”
Green, 25, said she’s a private chef studying to go to nursing school. She often prepares food for clients in her apartment and has to take online exams from home. The test proctors won’t let her wear noise-canceling headphones, she said, and the noise from the picketers can make it hard to focus.
“I broke down and bought a noise machine, like, two weeks into their stay here, when I realized that they weren’t really going anywhere,” Green said. “And it pretty much just stays on in the apartment 24/7.”
Andrew Cohen, 62, lives on the 39th floor of a Bush Street high-rise. You might think that being hundreds of feet off the ground would mitigate the noise. It doesn’t.
When The Standard visited Cohen’s apartment, the drums were a persistent, audible presence, despite the double-paned windows.
“Who would want to be in Union Square right now?” Cohen said. “If they had been down there for a week and then another week, it is what it is. They get to strike. But three months!”
Katlyn Diaz, who lives in the same building, released a pent-up sigh when asked about the strike.
The nighttime wailing of her toddler and daytime noise of the picketers ensure she gets no sleep, she said.
“I know some other people in my building have reached breaking points, where they’ve gone and had conversations with the strikers,” Green added. “People are definitely hitting that max point.”
A spokesperson for the union said it banned air horns from the picket line about a month ago and reduced the number of metal drums a few weeks back. The protesters stopped drumming on weekdays outside the Marriott Union Square because it’s located near healthcare facilities, he said.
The spokesperson added that the union didn’t expect the strike to last as long as it has and recognizes that residents bear the brunt of the noise.
Still, almost anyone who works, shops, or sleeps in Union Square must contend with the daily commotion. The Standard found that the district’s tall buildings generally constrain the noise to a two-block radius at street level, but because picketers are in front of seven hotels throughout the area, there’s little respite.
Alisa Gorunova, a staffer at the Apple Store next to the Grand Hyatt, quipped that the favorite “all day, all night” chant of the protesters is perfectly apt.
“It is constant,” Gorunova said.
The 24-year-old said the noise initially gave her headaches, but she has learned to tune it out. She added that customers frequently complain about the noise but said she hasn’t noticed a decrease in foot traffic.
Yazan K., a security guard at the Dyson store who did not want to share his last name for privacy reasons, said he has a love-hate relationship with the strikers.
“It polarizes me,” he said. “One day, I’m with them. The next day, I’m like, ‘They’re assholes.’”
Even guests at picketer-free hotels aren’t safe. A security guard at the Handlery Hotel, which is directly across from the Westin St. Francis’s picket line, said guests in street-facing rooms almost always ask to be moved.
Workers on the picket line said they have sympathy for residents and visitors, but the fault doesn’t lie with them.
“I hear them,” said Juan Jose Salazar, a banquet waiter at the Grand Hyatt. “Many people are complaining. But the point I try to make is that it’s not us. It’s the hotel that refuses to give us benefits.”
Residents are usually mollified when he explains that to them, he yelled over the shouts of two dozen strikers.
At the Westin St. Francis — where a crowd of three dozen workers lackadaisically smacked plastic buckets with sticks — Lisa Mo, who works as a maid, seemed unconcerned with the complaints.
“Talk to the boss,” Mo said. “Talk to the mayor. Only the boss can solve the problem. We can’t.”
Neither the mayor’s office nor Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie replied to requests for comment. Representatives for the hotels didn’t reply, either.
Another maid, Maggie Mak, agreed with Mo’s assessment.
“You should talk to the hotels about our contracts,” Mak said.
She then left her interview with The Standard to resume thwacking a wok with a stick.