'Rat pack' vs. De Niro
‘Nonunion labor’ protest
“Never rat on your friends” is one of his most famous lines, but acting legend Robert De Niro is now co-starring with a giant inflatable union-protest rat.
The “Goodfellas” star and his partners broke a promise to use union workers to build a sprawling new film studio in Queens — prompting labor activists to set up their symbolic inflatable rat at the site in protest, officials said Friday.
“If De Niro doesn’t care that workers are being exploited, shame on him,” Chaz Rynkiewicz, vice president of Laborers Local 79, told The Post. “We hope he clears this up ASAP.”
The “Taxi Driver” actor and the development firm he’s using, Wildflower LTD, agreed to “seek union labor” during a public review of the $600 million Astoria complex, according to a July 2021 document from the Queens Borough President’s Office.
‘Not too much to ask’
But despite the star’s history as a vocal union supporter, the vast majority of construction workers assigned to the seven-story studio were nonunion — including plumbers, sheet metal workers and electricians, state Sen. Jessica Ramos said.
“It’s not too much to ask that Mr. De Niro live up to his professed values as a union man. If you want to build in my district, you need to build union,” Ramos said.
“This is about worker safety, this is about the quality and efficiency of the project, and it’s about ensuring family-sustaining wages are coming back to my community.
“Black and brown construction workers are being exploited at this site, not receiving living wages and not receiving the union training they need to build this well,” Ramos said at a press conference outside the soon-to-be-built film studio, according to Patch.com, which first reported the conflict.
Ramos and reps from Laborers Local 79, Steamfitters Local 638 and Sheet Metal Local 28 gathered Thursday to protest the multi-building project, which will replace the old Steinway Pianos factory on 19th Avenue near Luyster Creek.
At the demonstration, workers set up Scabby the Rat — a 12-foot inflatable rodent symbolic of union protests — outside the site.
Anthony Guerrero, political director of Sheet Metal Local 28, demanded that De Niro “put his money where his mouth is,” according to Patch.com
De Niro (inset), a longtime member of the Screen Actors Guild, told an audience during a 2020 acceptance speech that he was grateful for the backing of the group — particularly “these days, when there’s so much hostility towards unions.”
But work on his soon-to-be studio flies in the face of those values, Ramos said.
“You’re either a union man or you’re not — there’s no in between,” she said.
‘Don’t wait!’
In a tweet, she added: “Robert De Niro is a self-professed union man, and is spending $600 million to build in Astoria. Don’t wait until the studio is built to bring in union jobs, bring union quality work into the very foundation, and build a studio Queens can be proud of.”
A rep for De Niro, Stan Rosenfield, contended most laborers on site as of Friday are unionized.
“The majority of the workers on site currently are union,” Rosenfield said, without elaborating or providing numbers on the total ratio of union to nonunion laborers.