While city officials continue to investigate the risk of collapse at the former Pfizer corporate headquarters, Laborers Local 79 started sounding the alarm three years ago about the safety record of one of the building’s demolition subcontractors: Northeast Service Interiors LLC.
In 2024 and 2025, the city granted Northeast Specialist Group, LLC, demolition permits for the site, according to public New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) records obtained by Documented. The most recent permit expired June 18, 2026.
Northeast Specialist Group shares a phone number and address with Northeast Service Interiors and Nordest Services LLC, all located in Maspeth, Queens. Federal court documents reviewed by Documented found that the three companies share the same owner, Stephen DeFlorio.
All three companies have a history of fines for safety issues and worker complaints, city records show.
In 2025, the DOB issued Northeast Specialist Group $10,000 in penalties for failing to install proper protective netting after pieces of the former Pfizer building on E. 42nd Street fell onto a delivery truck, records show.
An employee of Nordest was killed in 2020 at a Manhattan job site after a pressurized fire extinguisher exploded while he was transporting it. Nordest was subsequently issued $20,000 in penalties by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
In 2019, DeFlorio and his three companies were also sued by six immigrant employees in a federal class action lawsuit for systemic wage theft. The case was settled out of court, with the workers receiving a lump sum payment of $215,000.
“Northeast exploits their workers,” said Mike Vatter, Local 79’s assistant director of organizing. “They pay them low wages, with multiple issues in the past.”
As previously reported in The City Reporter, since 2015, Northeast has been cited by the DOB for 146 safety violations and has paid $255,000 in penalties. That same year, Pedro Basilico, a 26-year-old immigrant from Mexico, was killed at a Manhattan construction site when five floors collapsed on him while he was working at a luxury hotel conversion for Northeast.
In 2013, the New York State Department of Labor also found that Northeast owed $46,323 in wages to 10 workers. The company was ordered to pay restitution.
When Documented reached DeFlorio by phone about his companies and his connection to the Pfizer building, he ended the call.
When asked about his hiring of Northeast, Nathan Berman, founder of MetroLoft, dismissed the allegations.
“It’s nonsense essentially,” he said. “We have very reputable contractors who do great work. Accidents do happen and will happen on union jobs or non-union jobs.”
The building, located on 235 E 42nd St., just a few blocks from iconic New York landmarks like the United Nations, Grand Central Terminal, and the Chrysler Building, was undergoing the largest office-to-apartment conversion in the city by the developer MetroLoft.
Neighboring buildings were forced to evacuate for fear that the 37-story skyscraper would come crashing down. Construction workers inside the building witnessed the structure’s columns buckling, and debris fell onto the street.
According to The City Reporter, the project’s general contractor, Robert Travis of 235 GC LLC, received $32,530 in safety violations since last July.
Utilizing the inflatable “Scabby the Rat,” Local 79 has been protesting MetroLoft’s hiring of Northeast as a subcontractor because of the company’s opposition to hiring union labor on its job sites, otherwise known as an open shop, framing it as a workplace safety issue.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are accidents that happen on union jobs, but not as catastrophic as the ones that happen on non-union jobs,” said Vatter.
Recent findings from a 2026 report by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health found that a majority — 81% — of the state’s construction deaths occurred on non-union job sites, with non-union workers accounting for a quarter of worksite deaths.
