Hotel workers unleash their fury on Dominique Strauss-Kahn

It was their uniforms that caught the eye. Dressed in traditional black and white or crisp blue, hundreds of hotel chambermaids gathered outside a courthouse on Monday to wait for the arrival of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. When the former IMF leader appeared, flanked by his billionaire wife and bodyguards, they roared their disapproval, shouting: “Shame on you.”

The protesters – almost all women – had come from more than 20 hotels across the city, and were all members of the New York Hotel Workers’ Union, there to support the 32-year-old hotel worker Strauss-Kahn is accused of attempting to rape and unlawfully imprison.