This story has not gained much traction yet other than in a story in yesterday's New York Times. However, UNITE HERE, one of the most prominent unions in the country, is on the verge of splitting and is currently engaged in what amounts to a civil war.
Ironically, I think the lead in the story puts the whole conflict into perspective:
With the economy in crisis and a new labor-friendly president in the White House, this should be a time when labor unions pull together.
Labor has had its fair share of conflicts lately, in 2005 with the creation of Change to Win (which I supported), and an ongoing and very public conflict within SEIU to undermine the leadership of Andy Stern, who I support at the helm of that union but with whom I disagree on the UNITE HERE issue.
It seems like the UNITE HERE problem is simply the product of egos that need to be brought under control. Both parts of the union complements the other - UNITE with the money and HERE with room for expansion. The problem is simply managerial.
More from the Times story:
On paper, the marriage made sense, besides making for the catchy Unite Here name. Unite — the descendant of two illustrious New York unions, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union — had lots of money to organize workers, but few workers left to unionize because so many apparel jobs had moved overseas. At the same time, Here was starved for cash, but saw an ocean of hotel and restaurant workers to unionize.
The idea was that once the unions merged, Unite’s ample treasury — it owns Amalgamated Bank, the only union-owned bank in the nation — would underwrite a surge in organizing.
But Mr. Raynor said that the two unions separately organized more workers per year before the merger than after, and that the unions’ cultures have proved vastly different. Unite was long a top-down, centralized union, working out of its headquarters in the Garment District in Manhattan; Here was probably the nation’s most decentralized union, with three separate headquarters and robust rank-and-file committees at many hotels.
In such trying economic times, I feel that the union just needs to pick one of these organizing models and run with it. If Raynor is deposed and HERE leadership takes over, so be it. Unions are not private companies, despite the assets they might possess (in UNITE HERE's case, the Amalgamated Bank). I understand his desire to protect his own interests, but the collective need of the union members must come first.
While it seems that UNITE HERE's problems run far deeper than SEIU's internal conflicts, I just cannot see how splitting up a potentially very powerful labor organization, despite its current problems, serves members well in a time of economic uncertainty. Not to mention that a breakup in membership such as this could hurt the Change to Win Coalition.
There is clearly much more going on behind that scenes that I will never know about, but from what I can gather, this is my two cents to UNITE HERE.