SL Green Realty Corp., which bills itself on its website as New York City's largest office landlord, said it found itself in the crosshairs of Construction & General Building Laborers, Local 79 after it tapped a nonunionized construction company to handle demolition ahead of an academic development in the Financial District.
The real estate firm has plans underway to level a historic tower and construct a 215,000-square-foot, five-story dormitory that will be leased by Pace University. SL Green has contracted Alba Construction, a nonunionized contractor, to handle the required demolition, prompting Local 79 to organize pickets at the job site and at SL Green's uptown headquarters.
Over the past month, SL Green said the union has been dispatching its "goon squad," who the company said doesn't wear face masks, to post up outside its office and harass its employees and passersby with "saliva spewing, ear-piercing whistles." The activities fly in the face of the city's pandemic restrictions, the company added, which is seeking $1 million in damages.
"New York City has enacted uncompromising legal protections to combat this deadly virus that Local 79 wantonly disregards by dispatching its goon squad upon unsuspecting neutral parties, who are innocent bystanders, blowing their spit all over the public," the real estate firm said in Tuesday's lawsuit.
Local 79 did not respond to requests for comment, but in videos and images the union posted to its social media pages showing early October pickets at the Financial District job site and SL Green's offices, most of the participants appear to be wearing face masks, though some individuals had temporarily lowered them when making speeches.
A month earlier, SL Green said the union displayed the infamous giant balloon rat outside the firm's offices, with a placard that said, "shame on SL Green for allowing Alba Services to exploit construction workers." The union also urged passersby to call SL Green's top executive, Marc Holliday, to say "New York City Construction Workers deserve a living wage and benefits."
According to the suit, pickets charged at Holliday on his way into the office, while also harassing other employees and pedestrians.
"Local 79's agents have established a gauntlet with multiple confrontational males perniciously patrolling the narrow sidewalk in front SL Green's headquarters at 420 Lexington Avenue exposing pedestrians and the public to the same dangerous pervasive propelling of saliva and airborne emissions spewing from the Local 79 whistle blowing," SL Green said.
Representatives for SL Green and Alba Construction did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Pace University declined to comment.
SL Green is represented by Joseph M. Labuda, Richard Milman, Michael J. Mauro and Emanuel Kataev of Milman Labuda Law Group PLLC.
Counsel information for the union was not yet available.
The case is SL Green Realty Corp. v. Construction & General Building Laborers, Local 79, case number 1:20-cv-08720, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
--Editing by Steven Edelstone.
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