Metro

Brawlin’ maids are ready for a dust-up

(Reuters)

The next foreign big shot who tries to have his way with the hotel help is in for a big surprise.

Staffers and management at Manhattan’s ritzy Pierre hotel took self-defense classes with a second-degree-black-belt instructor yesterday, as employees learned how to put even the most persistent perverts in their place.

The half-hour classes came four weeks after a prominent Egyptian banker was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a housekeeper at the hotel.

Dozens of staff members — dressed in their uniforms and even high heels — showed up in shifts in the basement.

They stood in a circle and tried out sets of deft moves with the martial-arts instructor.

“Don’t strike with your fist because you could break your knuckles!” said instructor Mary Ann Carron, as she demonstrated proper technique with a pillow to about a dozen workers in the hotel’s Wedgwood Room. “Keep your hand flat.”

Carron also demonstrated how, if someone sneaks up behind them, maids should stomp the perv’s foot with their heel.

“Claim your personal space,” she instructed.

The staffers should be ready to use their newfound skills to fend off unsavory characters at a moment’s notice, Carron explained.

While riding the subway or on the job, she said, “I don’t like to keep my hands in gloves or in my pockets.”

At times during the training, the employees were laughing.

“It was good,” one staffer said after the session. “She was testing you. I feel prepared.”

Banker Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar, 74, pleaded guilty last week to third-degree sexual abuse for his actions at The Pierre. He had been charged with first-degree sexual abuse, a felony punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The deal allows Omar to avoid jail time and return to Egypt.

Omar’s arrest last month came just two weeks after Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced former head of the International Monetary Fund, was charged with sexually assaulting a maid at the Sofitel hotel in Midtown.

The assaults led to calls for improved safety training for hotel workers, said John Turchiano, a spokesman for the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, which represents 29,000 employees.

“I think some of the other hotels will start doing the same thing,” he said.

Sofitel has already agreed to do training and provide electronic-alert devices, Turchiano said.

amber.sutherland@nypost.com