Midtown Hotel Fired Older Workers During Pandemic, Lawsuit Says

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Managers of a ritzy Midtown hotel used the pandemic as a pretext for laying off dozens of older workers, replacing them with younger employees and bragging that they were "cleaning house," according to a new class-action lawsuit.

The suit against the Kimberly Hotel was filed in federal court last week by Darci Fernandez Penaloza, a 64-year-old ex-employee, on behalf of other laid-off workers.

It alleges that the Kimberly, a luxury hotel on East 50th Street between Third and Lexington avenues, laid off between 30 and 40 employees at the onset of the pandemic — most of them aged 40 or older.

They included Fernandez, a 25-year hotel veteran who worked as a housekeeper, and others who had worked for years at the Kimberly as doormen, porters and housekeepers.

Mujo Perezic, the hotel's vice president and general manager, referred to the layoffs as "cleaning house," the suit alleges.

The Kimberly remained mostly shut for months as COVID-19 halted most travel into the city. By March 2021, however, it had reopened — but the terminated workers were not rehired, the suit says.

Instead, they were replaced by younger, "presumably lower paid employees," the suit alleges.

The workers say the firings violated federal, state and city age-discrimination laws. They are asking a judge to award them back pay, force the hotel to rehire them to their old jobs and impose punitive damages against the hotel, among other demands.

The hotel said it would not comment on an ongoing lawsuit.