NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 1, 2026--
Hotel workers at the Fairfield by Marriott New York Manhattan Times Square and the Four Points by Sheraton Midtown - Times Square on West 40 th Street are calling for an unfair labor practice boycott and began picketing outside of the Times Square hotels Monday evening.
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The workers voted to become members of the Hotel & Gaming Trades Council, AFL-CIO (HTC) in October of 2022. Throughout years of negotiations for their first union contract, the union has filed multiple charges accusing the hotel of committing unfair labor practices – including failing to bargain in good faith, discriminating against workers because of their support for the union, encouraging workers to get rid of the union, replacing union positions with subcontracted workers, and more.
“We need the union”
The workers decided to organize with HTC in 2022 because they wanted a living wage, affordable healthcare, safer working conditions, and fair treatment.
What’s happening?
The workers and their union have put up a robust picket line and are encouraging customers to boycott the hotels and cancel their stays until management follows the law and treats these workers fairly.
Mayor Mamdani Voices Support for Workers, Deputy Mayor Julie Su Joins Him
NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani immediately voiced his support for these hotel workers upon news of the picket lines.
"Four years is too long to wait for a fair contract. These workers exercised their fundamental right to organize. They voted for a union. They came to the bargaining table ready to negotiate in good faith. And instead of respecting that decision, management has forced them to file federal charges to secure rights that should never have been in question,” said Mayor Mamdani.
“No one who works full time should have to choose between paying the rent and filling a prescription. No one should spend years serving this city's visitors only to be denied the dignity and respect they have earned. New York City stands proudly with these workers, and this administration will continue to support their fight for a fair contract."
NYC Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su joined the Mayor in supporting the picket line:
"What's happening at these Times Square hotels is exactly what unfair looks like — workers earning $17 an hour after seven years of loyalty, going without health insurance, handling security incidents they were never trained for, all while management refuses to bargain in good faith. The Mamdani administration stands with HTC and these workers."
Hotel Guests: Know Your Rights
Picket lines may result in uncertainty for guests and event planners, disruptions, and noise. Under NYC law, hotels are required to notify guests of significant service disruptions, including strikes and picket lines. The law mandates that consumers be permitted to cancel without penalty if notified of such a service disruption after booking.
For more information, visit the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection’s website.
HTC members walk the picket line in front of the Fairfield by Marriott New York Manhattan Times Square and the Four Points by Sheraton Midtown - Times Square.
MEDORA, N.D. (AP) — President Donald Trump is visiting North Dakota on Wednesday to see the newly built Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, a massive facility exploring the life of America's 26th president. The 96,000-square-foot library is in the rugged, lonely landscape where the young Easterner built his conservation values while ranching and hunting in the 1880s.
Saturday's official opening coincides with July Fourth celebrations honoring the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Trump is coming early to see the $450 million project, a boost for Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, a former governor of North Dakota, while also bringing the nation's birthday festivities to a region synonymous with its westward expansion.
The Republican president made the trip aboard his new Air Force One, a Boeing 747 given to the United States by Qatar. Trump said he asked Boeing, which is set to deliver new planes for the president's service in 2028, if there were any countries that had potential substitutes in the interim.
“I said, ‘Who has the best one?’ They said, ‘Qatar," Trump said, adding that he was assured, "'There’s never been a plane like it.'”
All living presidents were invited to the grand opening of the library, which joins more than a dozen throughout the country examining the lives and legacies of U.S. presidents from Ronald Reagan in California to Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York and Herbert Hoover in Iowa. The Obama Presidential Center recently opened in Chicago, bringing together four former presidents for the occasion.
Trump will be the library’s first official visitor, according to the library's executive director, Robbie Lauf. Trump will speak at a nearby Western-themed amphitheater at an event run by Freedom 250, the Trump-created group billed as nonpartisan that he has tapped to organize the festivities he will participate in this week.
Before Trump's arrival, construction workers gathered alongside railroad tracks in Medora, the Old West tourist town where he is expected to arrive aboard a train. Rough Rider reenactors milled nearby with their horses in the shade.
On Friday, the president plans to visit South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore for Independence Day fireworks, as he did in 2020.
Trump has often praised Roosevelt and has compared himself favorably to the late president. Trump began his second term last year by trumpeting construction of the Panama Canal during the Roosevelt administration.
Trump even said the U.S. might seek to take back the waterway from Panama to curb influence from China. That is a goal overshadowed by his suggestions that Washington might seize control of Greenland or that Canada could become America's 51st state.
In the run-up to staging a UFC fight on the White House lawn for his 80th birthday, Trump said he was aware of Roosevelt holding far lower-key boxing matches in the White House. Trump made no mention of Roosevelt having detached the retina of his left eye during one such sparring session.
The trip also underscores the president's esteem for Burgum, who has become a key face of and cheerleader for the president’s expansive renovation projects around Washington.
Roosevelt visited Dakota Territory in 1883 to hunt bison. On Valentine's Day the next year, his mother and wife died hours apart in the same house in New York.
Devastated, Roosevelt came to Dakota where he ranched cattle and hunted big game in the West during visits mostly from 1884 to 1887.
He underwent deep personal growth from his experiences, including chasing boat thieves down a river, standing up to a bully in a bar and working alongside cowboys who ridiculed him for wearing eyeglasses.
Roosevelt, who served as president from 1901 to 1909, later said he never would have been president were it not for his experiences in North Dakota.
Near the library is Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Visitors can hike trails and drive a scenic route through the colorful, rugged Badlands where bison and wild horses roam.
In 2019, Burgum championed the library to North Dakota's Republican-led legislature when he was governor, touting its tourism potential. The legislature approved a $50 million operations endowment, requiring library planners to raise $100 million in private donations, a goal met in 2020. Donations total about $354 million as of early 2026.
Donors include oil executive Harold Hamm, the Waltons of Walmart fame, Kenneth Griffin, founder and CEO of Citadel, a hedge fund, and Burgum himself.
Burgum also has lobbied for Roosevelt’s induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Roosevelt became alarmed at the number of injuries and deaths of college football players and convened a 1905 White House meeting featuring the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton to urge safety improvements. That helped sparked the founding of the NCAA, college’s sports governing body.
Visitors will learn about Roosevelt's conservation ideas and his Rough Riders regiment of the Spanish-American War, but also his “horrific comments” about Native Americans and other issues "that have obviously aged poorly," Lauf said.
Artifacts, many of them out of public view for decades, will tell Roosevelt's story. Visitors will see his Rough Riders uniform; the 1884 diary grieving his terrible loss; and the eyeglasses case, speech and shirt from the 1912 assassination attempt against him.
Organizers hope the library draws families and thousands of school children from the region, as well as some of the millions of motorists who travel to Yellowstone National Park and the Black Hills.
“It's a feature, not a bug, that we are in a county of 1,000 people and a town of 120,” Lauf said. “TR came here for that purpose.”
The Dakota Resource Council on Tuesday hosted several conservation leaders who criticized Burgum and Trump for policies they say contradict Roosevelt's conservation principles, such as cutting staff and budgets and prioritizing energy development on public lands.
Last year Burgum signed an order prioritizing the openness and accessibility of parks to the public amid the workforce cuts. He has compared America's public lands and natural resources to “assets” that should be responsibly developed to exert “energy dominance.”
Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump walks up the stairs of the newly designated Air Force One, a formerly Qatari-owned jumbo jet that has been converted into the official U.S. presidential aircraft, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Wednesday, July 1, 2026, to attend the opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, N.D. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)(AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One, Wednesday, July 1, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump, from right, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tour the East Potomac Park golf course, Sunday, June 28, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
President Donald Trump speaks before signing a presidential memo to the EPA on pollution control in vehicles, in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, June 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
