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Author Topic: UNITE-HERE merger
robbie_dee
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posted 26 February 2004 10:41 AM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
The nation's leading apparel workers' union and the leading union for hotel and restaurant workers have voted to merge, union officials said yesterday.

The merger will bring together two unions that are among the most aggressive in organizing nonunion workers, especially immigrants. Unite, formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, has 180,000 members, while the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, or HERE, has 250,000 members.

By voting to approve the merger yesterday at a meeting in Los Angeles, the board of the hotel employees' union moved to create a larger organization whose members range from seamstresses in New York's Chinatown to hotel housekeepers in San Francisco.

"We think it makes sense to have like-minded unions join together to be bigger and stronger," said John W. Wilhelm, president of the hotel employees' union. "We think the organizing programs of both unions will be dramatically accelerated."

The merged union will be based in Manhattan and will be called Unite HERE.


Read More in NY Times

UNITE Press Release


From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Polunatic
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posted 26 February 2004 10:43 AM      Profile for Polunatic   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Sounds like a marriage made in heaven. I have huge respect for the leaders of both those unions in Toronto. Dagg/Clifford. Now that's a tag team!
From: middle of nowhere | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 26 February 2004 11:27 AM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I like both unions, too. I didn't know much about them in Canada, but I am glad to hear that you have high regard for them, there.

I've got a lot of respect for the Intl presidents Wilhelm and Raynor, too, who are going to jointly head the new org.

I note, though, that the UNITE press release includes the following statement:

quote:
UNITE historically represents workers in the apparel and textile industries, and more recently has organized industrial laundries, distribution centers and workers in light manufacturing. HERE members are in the hospitality industries, working in hotels, airports, casinos, food service, and restaurants. Though there are places where the industries overlap, particularly in hospitality and laundry, the merger is primarily a reflection of the two unions’ shared values and priorities: social justice, economic opportunity, civil rights, the rights of immigrant workers and a commitment to organizing unrepresented workers.

“This is a non-traditional merger of two non-traditional unions,” says President Wilhelm. “Our outstanding members and staff are recognized even outside of the labor movement; both unions are regarded for their work on behalf of progressive causes. The HERE Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride brought together activists of every stripe, and UNITE is largely responsible for developing the antisweatshop movement in the U.S. and Canada.”


This is all true, and I can surely see some benefits to such an "ideological" merger. That being said, though, just last year the same union presidents Wilhelm and Raynor were arguing against conglomerate unions that represented a lot of different sectors without a common thread or focus. See e.g. Harold Meyerson's article "Organize or Die" (American Prospect 9/1/03):

quote:
"There's no consensus within labor on the role of the AFL-CIO in organizing," Wilhelm explains, "while there is a consensus on its role in national politics." Into this void the troika of Stern, Wilhelm and Raynor have galloped with their own strategic vision. All three believe that the labor movement should be restructured sectorally, which runs against the grain of what has become a common practice for many unions. Because public employees don't run the same risk of being fired for joining unions that private-sector workers do, many unions have concluded that they should shift their organizing efforts to the public sector. A number of private-sector unions have largely abandoned organizing efforts in their core industries to go after employees at public universities and hospitals.

A few years ago, Stern argued to his colleagues that sectoral distinctions made more sense -- that, for instance, the SEIU and a few other unions would organize in health care, where they had experience and expertise, while others would concentrate on other industries. This met with a cool reception from, among others, presidents unenthusiastic about the prospects of organizing in anemic manufacturing industries. But Wilhelm and Raynor embraced the notion, and, indeed, the three unions, with their members' consent, have swapped a few locals that were outside their jurisdictions.


You can read a whole bunch more about this idea, and how UNITE and HERE were working with SEIU, LIUNA and the Carpenters to make it happen, if you google the phrase "New Unity Partnership."

Following the logic of the NUP program, it would seem to make a lot more sense for a union like HERE to merge with a union like UFCW, since they both deal with food, hospitality, and the broader private service sector. Whereas UNITE might want to merge with another manufacturing union, or if they are moving more into distribution, then merging with the Teamsters. Of course, both UFCW and the Teamsters are conservative business unions, the ideological opposites of UNITE and HERE, and both UFCW and the Teamsters are so much larger than UNITE and HERE that they would swallow their prospective partners.

Still, I wonder if this means that some of the NUP unions are moving away from their original plan? I'd also be interested to hear what people here think of the trend toward union mergers in general?

[ 26 February 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]


From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Skye
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posted 26 February 2004 12:08 PM      Profile for Skye     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
What are people's opinions on the Organizing model that unions like HERE and UNITE employ? I hear a lot about the merits of their strategy, however, I am bothered by it somewhat.

It seems to be a lot about building big locals and increasing the 'market share'of an industry rather than ground-up member organizing. The argument is that through greater dominance of the market, they have the power to demand better agreements for their members. However, I think that the rank and file members sometimes become removed from the whole process.

I recognize the urgency in gaining members etc, and I know that they have been very successful in increasing their numbers. However, are 'numbers' the only thing that is important? What about social justice, one's connection to their union, and the movement itself?

I would like for people to share their thoughts on this. I have included an article (about a year old), from Labor notes that includes some of the things that I mentioned above.

quote:
For example, some unions-SEIU, UNITE, HERE, and AFSCME- still fervently believe in “staffing up,” an approach aided by the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute. By hiring, training, and rapidly deploying large crews of full-time organizers and researchers-often recruited from outside their own ranks-they approach the “challenge of growth” like a corporation retooling its sales force.

At the summit, traditional organizing rhetoric-which invokes the spirit of social justice movements-was clearly giving way to management-style jargon about gaining “market share,” increased “density” and “scale,” or more “synergy between national union and industry strategies.”

As a result, relatively little time was spent discussing what should be the central task of organizers-helping workers build, from the bottom up, organizations capable of winning better conditions through sustained workplace activity.


quote:
In his plenary speech, Raynor actually referred to union democracy as “one of our faults”-a troublesome instrument of obstruction employed by foes of coordinated bargaining, organizing, or restructuring

http://www.labornotes.org/archives/2003/02/e.html

[ 26 February 2004: Message edited by: Skye ]


From: where "labor omnia vincit" is the state motto | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 26 February 2004 02:37 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
One other thing I'd like to point out is this merger almost definitely means John Sweeney is going to face a challenge for President of the AFL-CIO next year. Both Raynor and Wilhelm are relatively youthful, ambitious leaders. I don't think one union is big enough for the two of them. So I think this merger is going to push one of them to try to move up.
From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
radiorahim
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posted 26 February 2004 10:15 PM      Profile for radiorahim     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
On the whole, I think that this is a positive development. Both unions have a history of organizing folks in the lowest paid sectors of the economy.

Of course UNITE is a merged union itself made up of a merger of ACTWU and the ILGWU. ACTWU was formed by the merger of the TWA and I forget which other union.

"Merger-mania" if you can call it that has been going on in Canada for much longer than in the USA.

The CEP is probably the biggest example of this. Its made up mainly of the Canadian sections of former U.S. based unions who split with the international for various reasons and its now one of the "super unions".

The CAW has either absorbed or merged with the CBRT&GW, UE, CALEA, the CCU and I can't remember who all else.

The labour movement in both Canada and the U.S. has been severely fragmented. So if corporations can merge, I don't see anything wrong with workers merging their organizations.

The other thing I see happening is that there will be a gradual breakdown of the whole "public sector"/"private sector" union split.

Part of this is due to the privatization of government services.

On the other hand the Steelworkers Union represents the staff at the University of Toronto.

[ 26 February 2004: Message edited by: radiorahim ]


From: a Micro$oft-free computer | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 27 February 2004 01:29 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Radiorahim, do you (or does anyone here) know what practical effect this merger is going to have in Canada? What kind of presence do either UNITE or HERE have in the country? What kinds of things are they up to?

I know HERE Local 75 represents a number of hotels in Toronto. And I also used to know a few people who worked on staff for UNITE, but I never knew much about who their union represented.


From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
radiorahim
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posted 28 February 2004 03:21 AM      Profile for radiorahim     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
UNITE has historically represented workers in the textile and garment manufacturing industries.

These industries aren't anywhere near as big as they were 10-15 years ago. UNITE has also been doing some organizing in the retail sector and in some other small manufacturing plants that mainly employ low-paid immigrant workers.

In the Toronto area they've also been involved in setting up an association that lobbies for the rights of homeworkers as well.

HERE 75 of course represents alot of the workers in the big downtown Toronto hotels. (UFCW also represents hotel workers...but they tend to be hotels more out by the "airport strip")

On the whole I see this merger as a very positive development both stateside and in Canada.


From: a Micro$oft-free computer | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Polunatic
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posted 28 February 2004 03:54 AM      Profile for Polunatic   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
For example, some unions-SEIU, UNITE, HERE, and AFSCME- still fervently believe in “staffing up,” an approach aided by the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute. By hiring, training, and rapidly deploying large crews of full-time organizers and researchers-often recruited from outside their own ranks-they approach the “challenge of growth” like a corporation retooling its sales force.
That's not my impression of how HERE and UNITE function here in Toronto but I don't have much information.

I share some of Skye's concerns about this approach too but I think we need to look at what happens once the unit is organized - the democratic structures within the union, the culture, educational programs and local building approaches for example. All of these factors influence the relationship between the members and their union.


From: middle of nowhere | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 28 February 2004 09:21 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here's an interesting analysis I came across in the Joe Hill Dispatch, a quite excellent labor blog.

quote:
Thoughts on the HERE/UNITE Merger

I've been hearing rumours of the HERE / UNITE merger for a few months now. The announcement brings some interesting speculation.

The positioning of UNITE's Bruce Raynor as General President and HERE's Wilhelm as Hospitality President leads to two possible conclusions.

First, the positioning of Wilhelm the president of the larger union entering the merger as a subordinate co-president suggests that he most likely will challenge John Sweeney for head of the AFL-CIO. It's a bold move for Wilhelm, if his bid fails, he will no longer be the head of one of the largest, most aggressive unions, nor will he be head of the AFL.

Sweeney has said that he will run for re-election, but that may be posturing. It makes little sense for Sweeney to stay on. He has been head of the AFL for nearly ten years and he is nearly 70 years old. He would be facing a challenge from the wing of the federation that put him in power. He has done an excellent job in implementing the reforms he set out to bring about - transforming the AFL into a competent organization. Competence has paid off in spades in terms of Labor's political power. In terms of organizing, competence has brought only modest returns. It will take wrenching restructuring and realignment within the Labor Movement to bring about the kind of organizing that it will take to change Labor's fortunes. Not the kind of fight you'd be looking forward to after 45 years in the trenches. A fight that Wilhelm is well positioned to make given his union's success in organizing, especially given the tremendous gains workers as a class have made in Las Vegas, led by HERE.

The second conclusion I would draw from news of the merger is that it scotches rumours that the merger would free up Raynor to head a new retail workers union created by the New Unity Partnership. That move would have paralleled the CIO's creation of the Steelworkers Organizing Committee. Leftists were oddly up in arms at the thought of one of the Labor Movement's most brilliant organizers elbowing aside the UFCW's ineffectual, incompetent Doug Dority in taking the helm at organizing Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target et. al. In the last ten years the UFCW has organized 10 Wal-Mart butchers, who were promptly laid off. I had looked forward to the thought of Raynor heading that effort. More than likely, that is not in the cards for now.

The merger puts UNITE's large and talented organizing staff at the service of a larger organization with more opportunities to put their mojo to work.

The merger continues UNITE's shift from a rural union to an urban union. This is good news for Central Labor Councils. Coordination with hospitality workers within UNITE HERE in organizing laundry workers between can only speed the campaign and will provide a new constituency of militant minority and immigrant workers for CLC's around the country. Be on the look out for reform slates to run for control of CLC's.



From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
redshift
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posted 28 February 2004 09:46 PM      Profile for redshift     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
a revitalized and aggressive approach to organizing is probably the only sustainable move that any union can make right now. membership and market share have steeply declined through a complacent and confused dedication to entitlement centered service. growth will bring strength back to provide the benefits that we once wrongly considered concession-proof.
don't discount Doug McCarron of the Carpenters taking a run at leadership.He is a founding member of the renewal movement, although he seems to be pretty autocratic, where its neccessary.

"All told, the union spends $110 million a year on training, funded through member paycheck deductions, says Light, a carpenter for 31 years and an enthusiastic McCarron fan. With a growing national shortage of skilled carpenters, the training in Las Vegas and at 180 smaller union centers in the U.S. and Canada will give members an edge in a tight job market, Light says. And the investment shows employers the union is serious about providing value for higher wages. The center plays another essential role in McCarron's comeback plan: It is boot camp for his young army of union organizers.

Rebuilding union strength through aggressive organizing is not a revolutionary idea; most active unions, fighting a decades-long decline in membership, have been moving resources in that direction for years.

But McCarron has taken the concept to an extreme. His slogan: Organize or Die. He devotes half of the union's budget to organizing, far more than most. (The AFL-CIO's Sweeney is urging unions to spend one-third on organizing, but only a handful have done so.)"

http://www.local157.com/organize_or_die.htm

[ 28 February 2004: Message edited by: redshift ]


From: cranbrook,bc | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 28 February 2004 10:30 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
don't discount Doug McCarron of the Carpenters taking a run at leadership.He is a founding member of the renewal movement, although he seems to be pretty autocratic, where its neccessary.

McCarron can't run for the AFL-CIO job as long as his union remains unaffiliated. Under his leadership the Carpenters walked away from the federation in 2001, and they haven't come back yet. Even if they re-affiliated this year, there'd probably be too much bad blood.

"Pretty autocratic" also describes McCarron to a tee. His inclusion in the New Unity Partnership was one of the biggest sources of controversy when the five union heads launched it last year. You might want to check this article out, for example: A Manifest Destiny for Labor.

quote:
The twist here is that the NUP project is trading on the progressive credentials of SEIU's Andy Stern, HERE's John Wilhelm , UNITE's Bruce Raynor and, to a lesser extent, the Laborers' Terry O'Sullivan to present itself as the vanguard of militant unionism, holding aloft the banner "Organize or Die!", a rather ugly slogan formulated by their rather ugly partner, the right-wing president of the Carpenters union, Doug McCarron.

The author, Wypijewski, goes on to describe McCarron variously as "blustery," "the Republican's favorite labor leader," and as someone who considers unions to be "a business" and workers "servants."

McCarron has also inspired a rather spirited rank and file democracy group in opposition to his leadership: Carpenters for a Democratic Union.

I'm not saying I totally agree with Wypijewski or CDU, I am just saying I would have trouble seeing him contend for Sweeney's job with that baggage. I also see why it raised a lot of red flags in people's minds about the NUP.

Wilhelm and Raynor are a different story, though.

quote:
a revitalized and aggressive approach to organizing is probably the only sustainable move that any union can make right now. membership and market share have steeply declined through a complacent and confused dedication to entitlement centered service. growth will bring strength back to provide the benefits that we once wrongly considered concession-proof.

I couldn't agree more with this, though, the first half of what you've said. This is supposed to be the NUP's raison d'etre, as well as the main reason for the HERE-UNITE merger. I agree with the sentiment, I just have questions about the plan to achieve it.

[ 28 February 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]


From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
redshift
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posted 28 February 2004 10:49 PM      Profile for redshift     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
robbie , ya gotta pay closer attention.

WASHINGTON (Press Associates Union News) – Ending a long split, the Carpenters will reaffiliate with the AFL-CIO on Dec. 1, according to a memo to local councils from Federation Building and Construction Trades Department President Edward C. Sullivan.

Details of the terms of re-affiliation will be released a few days after its actual occurrence, a department spokeswoman says, but it follows major changes, approved Oct. 17, in how the building trades unions will handle jurisdictional disputes.

Jurisdictional problems were one reason Carpenters President Douglas McCarron cited for his union’s withdrawal in March 2000. The AFL-CIO formally ejected the Carpenters, but talks continued.

McCarron also demanded other changes: Firing Sullivan and BCTD Secretary-Treasurer Joseph Maloney; converting the BCTD presidency to a part-time position and abolishing Maloney’s post; greater power for the department’s administrative committee of its five largest unions; and weighted voting on all issues.
http://www.pww.org/article/view/2434/1/123/

funny how that works huh?


From: cranbrook,bc | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 28 February 2004 11:01 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That article is from 2002. Last I checked the Carpenters were still out:

AFL-CIO Sweeney Orders BCTD to Drop Carpenters; Building Trade Leaders Unified in Opposition

quote:
August 6, 2003

Reporting no progress in reaffiliation negotiations with the Carpenters and Joiners of America, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney has told the federation's Building and Construction Trades Department to disaffiliate the union at the national and district council levels by no later than Sept. 15, according to an Aug. 1 letter from Sweeney to BCTD President Edward C. Sullivan.

Sullivan, in an Aug. 3 written response to Sweeney, asked for more time to resolve the matter. Commending Sweeney for his continued efforts to persuade the Carpenters to return to the labor fold, Sullivan said he was "disappointed and concerned" that the discussions to date have not been successful.


I think the Carpenters might still be attending Building & Construction Trades Committee meetings, notwithstanding Sweeney's warnings, but they aren't paying their dues to the Fed and they sure aren't full members.

Back on the more general point, I am guessing you've got a fairly leftist perspective, redshift. How do you think that internal union democracy goals square with the struggle to organize vast swaths of nonunion industry? Because that seems to me to be the basis of much of the critique both of the Carpenters and the NUP as a whole.


From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
redshift
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posted 29 February 2004 01:42 AM      Profile for redshift     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
democracy functions best when it is interested and informed. to that end most organizations invest both time and effort in empowering and motivating their membership. in spite of this effort people insist upon the freedom to express themselves, whatever the detriment to their interests and we will always respect the right of the individual to be wrong, different ,apathetic or disenchanted.
i say organize them all , convince them thru demonstration that we have sufficient power to successfully accomplish constructive goals and successively build more challenging goals.we have to rebuild a lot more than unions.

its not rocket science but it needs time, money and effort. we have won before and we pre-exist nearly all forms of capitalism than social capitalism.we will win , because we must.


From: cranbrook,bc | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
redshift
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posted 29 February 2004 02:53 AM      Profile for redshift     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
excuse the double post but on the carpenter issue, you really have to slow down and read this stuff more critically. the carpenters have never actually left, McCarron has never actually left, he's just staking out turf.
http://www.carpentersunionbc.com/Press/clr_carpenters2.html

From: cranbrook,bc | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 29 February 2004 10:09 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
excuse the double post but on the carpenter issue, you really have to slow down and read this stuff more critically. the carpenters have never actually left, McCarron has never actually left, he's just staking out turf.

OK I think I see what you are saying. Regardless, I still think this little turf war between McCarron and Sweeney will probably prevent McCarron from contending for the AFL-CIO president's job himself. I think as long as the Carpenters' union continues to withhold its dues from the main AFL-CIO body, even if it is still participating in the subsidiary BCTD, he will actually be barred from running, and his union will be barred from sending delegates or casting votes at the AFL-CIO convention next year where the presidential position will be elected.

That being said, I am sure McCarron is quite interested in the results, and will probably wind up finding some way to back Wilhelm if Wilhelm goes ahead and runs against Sweeney, as many people now expect.


From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 29 February 2004 10:11 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Here's an interesting take on the merger from Harold Meyerson with the American Prospect magazine.

quote:
They are, by conservative estimate, the two most goddamn tenacious unions in the United States. The Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE), which Thursday announced their intention to merge, are each known for two of the most remarkable long-term campaigns in American labor history.
From 1963 through 1980, UNITE (actually, one of its predecessor organizations, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers) campaigned to unionize J.P. Stevens, a clothing manufacturer based in the right-to-work South. The workforce was biracial, the cops were against the union, the political culture offered no support, and the standard union playbook provided precious little guidance as to how the union should proceed. But proceed it did: The Stevens campaign was one of the first "new" organizing campaigns that a union had run -- relying on community-based and church-based as well as workplace organizing, hiring some '60s kids, among them a crack organizer named Bruce Raynor, who today is UNITE's president -- which most unions in those days tended to shun. In the end, and against all odds, the workers won their union in a story Hollywood dramatized in the 1979 movie Norma Rae, starring Sally Field.

From 1991 through 1997, the Las Vegas local of HERE was on strike against the Frontier Hotel, one of the oldest lodges on the Vegas Strip. Alone among the Strip hotels, the Frontier refused to sign a contract that granted workers wage increases and enabled them to win union representation at new hotels when a majority of them had signed union-membership cards (a process called "card check"). Five-hundred-fifty workers went on strike and walked a picket line for 24 hours a day (and midsummer Vegas days are a mite warm) for the duration of the strike -- that is, for six years, four months, and 10 days. During that time, not a single worker crossed the picket line. The strike ended only when the owners sold the hotel and the new owners agreed to the contract.

Almost as remarkable as the duration of these campaigns, and the skill and determination required to win them, was their object. At a time when organized labor in America was shrinking (which really is any time since 1955), both of these campaigns represented strategic and groundbreaking efforts to grow. The Stevens campaign was probably labor's most successful effort to break out of its Northeast-Midwest-Pacific Coast ghetto and organize the South. (Up until 15 years ago, when American companies wanted to outsource work to get cheaper labor, they didn't go offshore; they just went south.) And HERE's campaign in Vegas was labor's most successful effort to bypass the roadblocks to organizing that employers were able to erect by manipulation of the increasingly toothless National Labor Relations Act. Instead, by building the kind of worker solidarity evident in the Frontier strike and by offering hotel chains crucial political cooperation on industry-related matters if they acceded to the union's demands, HERE built a local that went from 18,000 members in the late '80s to 48,000 members today through the use of card check -- getting the company to recognize the union when a majority of the workers made clear they wanted it.

At the Frontier and at Stevens, then, the two unions made clear they'd commit an endless stream of resources to campaigns that marked strategic breakthroughs in union building. But neither union has ever been more strategic -- for themselves or for the movement as a whole -- than they were Thursday when they announced their decision to merge.

All too many union mergers take place when one of the mergees is at death's door. That's not the case this time.


Read the Rest


From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
robbie_dee
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posted 26 March 2004 01:25 PM      Profile for robbie_dee     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I thought I would update this thread by posting a more critical analysis which was just published in this month's Labor Notes:

The UNITE-HERE Merger: Is It a Step Forward … or Business as Usual?

quote:
By creating a larger, general union, Wilhelm and Raynor have created the kind of union the NUP claims is part of labor’s problem. If the NUP is solely focused on the growth of its four member unions, other unions may have cause for concern about the possibility of raiding by the NUPers.

MEMBERS IN THE DARK

Leaving the NUP aside, how will this merger affect HERE and UNITE’s members? Jon Palewicz of HERE Local 2 in San Francisco says it’s hard to tell, particularly since “the merger was planned and negotiated in advance and in secret.”

According to Palewicz, a former national leader of the HERE reform group HERETIC, while there was “a story ready for The American Prospect (a national magazine) within a few hours of the merger’s announcement…tons of the unions’ staff and officers-the folks that will have to live the merger and make it work-didn’t know anything about it.”

Palewicz says that the merger “has nothing to do with rank-and-file participation [or] informed consent.” He does not expect union leadership to encourage “rank-and-file discussion and debate about the consequences of this merger, such as how it will affect contracts, pensions, and by-laws.”

Both Palewicz and Michalik note that members will have no vote on the merger, which the unions say is expected to be ratified at a special joint convention this July. They each say this is consistent with HERE’s top-down structure.

If these unions are already undemocratic, as Palewicz and Michalik assert, the merger will only exacerbate that problem. In a general union where power is concentrated at the top, it becomes that much harder for workers in any one division (which was formerly a whole union) to have power over decisions on contracts and organizing drives in their industry.



From: Iron City | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged

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