This past weekend in the City of Brotherly Love, the five-year-old partnership between UNITE and HERE may have finally met its end.
Workers representing 150,000 former UNITE-HERE members held the first convention of a new union to be known as "Workers United." The Workers United folks, representing 15 UNITE-HERE Joint Boards (largely composed of folks loyal to Bruce Raynor's UNITE side of the organization, but also representing close to 40,000 former HERE members) had voted on March 7th to disaffiliate from UNITE-HERE, but until last weekend's convention, it wasn't clear what these schisms would amount to.
The president of the new union is Edgar Romney (no relation to Mitt, as far as we know), and will be the only African-American head of a major international union. And in a move that should surprise no one, Workers United has announced its affiliation with Andy Stern's SEIU.
So what are we to make of all of this? The establishment of Workers United will not spell an end to the acrimony between the Wilhelm and Raynor factions (especially given the continuing struggle for control of the Amalgamated Bank), but one may hope that both sides are starting to see where this is all headed, and perhaps some healing can begin. That's the optimistic view, at least. And as long as we are accentuating the positive, it is worth noting that Workers United strikes plenty of progressive notes on its website and it has put together a dynamic and diverse leadership team.
On the other hand, the affiliation of Workers United with SEIU raises serious question that could deepen, rather than heal, some of the biggest rifts in the labor movement right now. Although SEIU has denied meddling in the internal affairs of UNITE-HERE, Workers United's lightning-fast affiliation with SEIU certainly gives credence to those that have leveled such accusations in the past. And for those wary of Stern's conquistador instinct and authoritarian tendencies, the circumstances surrounding the establishment of Workers United may also be a cause for concern.
There is also the worry that the alliance between Workers United and SEIU may advance the problematic idea that the UNITE/HERE split is just another shot fired in a proxy war between Change to Win and AFL-CIO, with Workers United/UNITE/CtW/SEIU on one side, and HERE/AFL-CIO on the other. As vivaelbund has written, the differences between UNITE and HERE are substantive and long-standing, and it would be an unfortunate oversimplification to reduce it to a territorial pissing match. That being said, I would be surprised if HERE did not speed up its negotiations with AFL-CIO in response to these new developments.
Although I am among those who have some reservations about Stern and the circumstances surrounding Workers United's founding, the new union appears to have great potential and I wish it the best. My personal feelings about UNITE-HERE echo those expressed by AFL-CIO union presidents Leo Gerard of United Steelworkers and Ron Gettelfinger of UAW in their letter from mid-March: the UNITE-HERE partnership is broken, and the sooner the break-up is complete, the better for all involved. We need to move on.
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The workers united "union" delegates meeting in Philadelphia "represent" approximately 75,000 members of Unite Here. Several joint boards who had supposedly sided with Raynor's dissident faction chose not to participate in this mock convention and several large former HERE locals who were part of joint boards that did participate, pulled out of their joint boards. The voting leading up to the convention was a haphazard mix of partial joint board votes (some of the joint boards were composed of as few as 20 people, the majority of whom were staff rather than elected members) which included converting meeting sign-in sheets as "petitions" calling for a convention.
ReplyDeleteThe real story here is the impressive media/communications juggernaut that SEIU has built up -- and corresponding disconnect from its own members and locals -- so that it could create the impression in the press and blogosphere of a reality that simply doesn't exist.
The other real story is that the HERE side of UNITE HERE has achieved 50% density in gaming nationwide and 20% density in hotels nationwide -- both are considerable achievements with generally high contract standards. SEIU by contrast -- though there has been a proud history of dedicated organizing in its core healthcare sectors, has only managed to achieve 9.5% density in hospitals and 11% density in nursing homes nationwide. Its dream of a national healthcare union and achieving majority density in healthcare are great dreams and ambitions. Stern is famous for asking to be judged by results rather than intentions. By his own measure, HERE has been far more successful than SEIU in organizing and establishing a high level of standards for service workers in their respective core industries. HERE has failed to amass the quite impressive SEIU media/communications/messaging prowess -- however, the growing strains within SEIU will show that a PR machine is a poor substitute for a union with a clear organizing focus in its core industries, a clear set of standards which are the measure of contract gains, and a structure which encourages rather than sees as incidental the ownership of the union by an engaged rank and file membership.
Lastly, Workers United, as of yesterday, was actually absorbed into SEIU and does not exist as a stand alone national union. See the Workers United website which states the vote resulted in Workers United becoming a "conference of SEIU."
To start, the Wilhelm comparison of hospitality to healthcare is deeply flawed. There is generally significant political pressure that can be put upon a casino to play nice in an organizing drive by going through the local gaming commission. Casinos are also much more vulnerable to tarnishing their image as union busting.
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking, hospitals are long established institutions, much less vulnerable to either political or PR attack. And the issue of patient care suffering during a union drive, capped off with the ever rising cost of healthcare, puts any union at a distinct disadvantage.
Now look at how potential members are distributed through the healthcare sector versus gaming and hotels and how difficult it is to reach those potential members on the shop floor. It's also far far easier to "seed" a hotel or casino with union organizers than it is to find an RN /professional union organizer. Now consider the difference between organizing 900 members in one casino versus 900 members scattered across 40 nursing homes. And while it's simple to book a room and roam the halls talking to maids and waitresses in a hotel, it's not possible to gain access to the floors of a hospital or long term care facility without getting booted out on your behind.
I'd also be curious to learn more about the supposed "high standards for service workers" in the hospitality core industry of HERE because in my experience the majority are still working close to minimum wage
and are currently being laid off, bullied and screwed by the thousands as hotels freeze wages, demand concessions, forget to make benefit payments and bounce paychecks where ever they can't balance the budget -- while the typical HERE local doesn't do a damn thing about it.
Perhaps the stronger comparison on standard of living would be to SEIU property service workers, where SEIU has fought and won a number of significant "Justice for Janitors" campaigns in Right to Work states with no existing union density.
Lastly, I have to admit I'm flummoxed by the notion that HERE enjoys some structure that better encourages "the ownership of the union by an engaged rank and file membership." Huh? One thing I can state flat from working within both organizations -- yes, you bet, SEIU sees member engagement as incidental, no argument there. But in HERE? The membership is more often than not patently suppressed in a feudalistic culture that demands tests of loyalty, places loyal staff members on the shop floor to rapidly elect them into leadership, prevents members from running for office, and uses the stewards structure to "keep members in line" instead of organizing them to greater involvement. If anything, I've seen HERE members eager to participated barred or utterly frustrated in doing so. And don't even get me started on "pink sheeting".
I think the ones who put "union" between quotation marks when referring to the new union Workers United are like employers trying to bring workers to the NLRB instead of card check recognition.
ReplyDeleteSomething else to consider in this argument about sector density -- according to the federal government there are 1.2 million service jobs in hotels and 11.5 million non-management jobs in healthcare and over half of those (5.9) are professional. Thus the task of reaching any density benchmark is far more daunting in healthcare than it is in hospitality.
ReplyDeleteWith a little over 1 million members in their healthcare division, SEIU has achieved over 20% density in service jobs in healthcare. And one must bear in mind that SEIU shares the organizing turf of professional healthcare job with nurse's unions and the AFT.
Consider too the challenges in organizing professionals who tend not to see themselves in "union jobs".
Lastly, SEIU is relatively new to organizing in healthcare and shares even the service jobs in the turf with a number of other unions. Compare that to HERE and it's near exclusive hold on the hospitality sector, having achieved only 20% density in 120 years. Doesn't strike me as all that successful, or all that hopeful for the struggling non-union hotel workers waiting for their shot at a union shop.