Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Labor Organizing

Hospitality Unionization Brings up the Rear

jstuart — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:00:30 +0000

New Orleans Well, Happy Valentine’s Day! Makes me think of millions of people going out to restaurants, lounges, movies, theaters, and wherever and toasting their sweeties, and then usually not leaving much of a tip later for the servers. Where’s the love?

Wherever it might be, it’s not for unions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics now says the Leisure and Hospitality subset of service sector employment is once again about 13,000,000 workers. That’s a lot of hospitality!

On the other hand despite all of the employees and the low wages and sorry working conditions in the back of the house for hospitality workers, the rate of unionization is only a smudge over 3%. North Carolina which trails the nation in unionization and is the scourge of unions has a 3% unionization rate if that helps you visualize how bad this is.

The 3+% unionization rate translates to about 310,000 union members of the US total.

If we wanted to zero in on one sector of employment that desperately needs real unions and real organizing drives to finally turn the tide and make a difference for low wage workers as well as revitalize the entire American labor movement, I would challenge brothers and sisters to come up with another set of workers where our potential is as great or the need as dramatic.

Happy Valentine’s Day to that!

Hospitality Wars Close to Settlement

dine — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:43:27 +0000

New Orleans It’s amazing to me how many people came up to me over the last week on the East Coast and mentioned having read my recent blog about “Pink Sheeting and One-on-One’s” in UNITE-HERE and elsewhere in the labor movement. Google analytics tells me that this is most frequently visited current item on the list.

An email shared with me by some young labor organizers who were veterans of the Cornell program reminded me how destructive such conflict is to the future of the labor movement. An SEIU organizer was recounting the struggles to put together a majority in a unit of a couple of hundred workers over a number of months to suddenly find six UNITE/HERE organizers swoop down to turn the unit topsy-turvy. There are probably similar stories with the union’s names reversed. All of this redefines the “race to the bottom” in union membership and relevance for working people in America.

Other former organizers tried to pull me on either side of the divide. An ex-AFSCME organizer told me about a recent fundraiser in Montclair for the divisive effort being led by Sal Roselli in the Bay Area. He was interrupted by an SEIU contractor who had done some communications work in California telling him he had no clue of what was going on. I left them still arguing the fine points of this disaster.

Most interesting to me have been the messages from ex-UNITE/HERE folks chiding me for being too easy on John Wilhelm and protective of Carl Lechow, the long time organizing director for HERE. In my earlier piece I assumed that Wilhelm and Lechow were distracted and the pink sheeting was an aberration and the “one-on-one’s” simply out of control. These folks believed they both knew and encouraged these kinds of practices. It is so contrary to my experience with either of these brothers, that I simply can’t believe it, so I won’t, but neither have I have wanted to really believe the Synanon period of the farmworkers until at this point there seems no way to deny its existence and impact.

The best news shared with me on the trail was the rumors that there may finally be a real resolution and a true peace in this inhospitable conflict between SEIU and UNITE/HERE. The architect of this potential settlement seems to have been Joe Hanson, president of the UFCW, who from what several people shared with me, has been indefatigable in trying to keep front doors, back doors, and all channels open in pursuit of an agreement. What both parties are reviewing now was described as a “tough, but fair” settlement with each side having to eat some good portions of crow and a fair division of units and assets. All of which is dandy for the accountants, but most importantly in my view I also heard that there would be real clarity and a complete understanding on organizing jurisdiction and that would be huge.

The only happy ending to this tawdry episode would be a real agreement on jurisdiction that once again paves the way for unions that have been committed to organizing, having their sights clearly trained on real targets and the objective of building mass organization among hospitality and other low wage service workers who desperately demand their own organizations and the right to fight for a better future at their workplaces. To me it all seems to come down to whether or not President Wilhelm wants to keep fighting or to have peace and get back to organizing, since he has had the strongest cards in his hand throughout this mess. John Wilhelm has been a seminal organizer and leader for hospitality workers in our time. I hope he sees a way to be a leader here in binding the wounds of our crippled labor movement.

Organizers Burden

jstuart — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:33:38 +0000

Bangkok The Organizers’ Forum delegation had two great meetings with organizers and the job before them was stunning and prodigious. We had the opportunity to meet for several hours with five union organizers working to organize industrial plants along the eastern shore of Thailand. We also got lucky and our trip coincided with a training session for young organizers from Korea, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines where we were able to spend several hours sharing discussions about the state of community organizations. These were gifts!

The union organizers meet once a month to discuss their work. Rudy Porter of the Labor Solidarity Center estimated for us that these five in the last decade had probably organized 100,000 workers with 9600 being last year where they were keeping the pace. This is all the more remarkable since that level of production represents 20% of the total union membership in Thailand!

The model they described whether with giant auto conglomerates and supply plants or Chevron operations (the largest private employer in Thailand) was all conducted in total secrecy in home visits and snooker parlors where organizers could build the relationships strong enough to allow workers to weather the risk of likely terminations and blacklisting, if they were caught organizing a union before a majority had been reached. There was “card check” here, but the process was triggered by signatures demanding negotiations. If anything was premature, excuses for termination would fall as hard and quickly as the rain.

I asked if they ever used a “salting” program where organizers got a job inside and helped organize that way. They all laughed that they were too old. They weren’t of course, but what they were really saying was that workers were hired early and spit out used before 30.

They estimated that there were probably only 10 full-time professional union organizers in Thailand. We asked about expanding capacity, and the answer was “thank goodness” for the rank-and-file, which means that despite their success there is little help coming to finish the job or accelerate the work if the law changes to allow public sector unionization.

Our community organizer colleagues assembled by our long time partners and friends at LOCOA – Leaders and Organizers of Community Organizations of Asia and its coordinator, Fides Bagasso, allowed me to see some old friends and meet some new ones, and gave everyone an opportunity to learn about the depth of commitment and conviction that has been the tradition of community organizing in this part of the world for almost 40 years thanks to many heroes like Denis Murphy, Herb White, Rabial Mallick, and scores of others in individual countries.

The stories were moving, but over and over there was a footnote of nostalgia. Training and other programs that had existed before, but had been shut for lack of resources seemed to be an oft repeated theme. I asked about resource limitations for international work, and everyone nodded in agreement.

We have to figure out a way, because in this part of the world there is so much will!

Becker to the NLRB

wade — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:23:11 +0000

New Orleans Here’s a big win no matter how you shake and bake it: Craig Becker being nominated for a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)! This is not to say that we do not need labor law reform desperately, but having crossed paths with Craig for more than 20 years, finally we have a situation where a brilliant, effective, and pro-worker/pro-union lawyer will be on the NLRB.
The thumbnail sketch would see Craig as a legal scholar having been a professor here and there with good union credentials having been listed as associate general counsel to SEIU for years as well no matter what else he was doing. All true and all good.
For my money Craig’s signal contribution has been his work in crafting and executing the legal strategies and protections which have allowed the effective organization of informal workers, and by this I mean home health care workers, under the protection of the National Labor Relations Act. The effective organization of informal workers — home health and home day care — has been the great, exceptional success story within the American labor movement for our generation, leading to the membership of perhaps a half-million such workers in unions like SEIU, AFSCME, CWA, and the AFT. Further this organizational work has led to increases in wages and benefits for such at-home workers across the board.
Craig was the key lawyer from the beginning in the early 1980’s who was able to piece together the arguments and representation that allowed those of us involved in trying to organize home health care workers in Illinois, Massachusetts, and elsewhere to beat back the arguments that such workers should be denied NLRA coverage because they were either self-employed or tainted by a co-employer situation where they might be quasi-public employees because they were directly reimbursed. His role was often behind the scenes devising the strategy with the organizer and lawyers, writing the briefs for others to file, and putting all of the pieces together, but he was the go-to-guy on all of this. I can remember Keith Kelleher negotiating the subsidy for SEIU Local 880 in Chicago and always making sure that there was the money for the organizers, but that SEIU was also still willing to allow access to Craig.
Craig Becker will no longer be a secret weapon for workers at the NLRB, particularly informal workers who desperately need protections under labor law, but at least with him sitting on the board, there will finally once again be a fair and effective advocate and safeguard for workers. Thanks for a solid, President Obama!

Union Made and Union Owned

wade — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:34:53 +0000

New Orleans       News of a settlement by the United Auto Workers (UAW) averting bankruptcy at Chrysler and announcements by General Motors of their strategy for survival create a historic reinvention of capitalism in modern America. If these plans are implemented, then the UAW will own some 39% of GM and 55% of Chrysler. The US government would own the majority of GM, making the autoworkers a new kind of public employee union.
   Amazing how times change. It was not that long ago when it was considered the end of civilization as business knew it when Doug Fraser from the UAW took a seat on the Chrysler board of directors. Now, the UAW could virtually appoint the full board if this all comes to pass.
   For many of us who have made sure that we owned cars and trucks made in our auto plants by union labor, this ups the ante. How could we explain ever owning a car that was made — and OWNED — by union labor? Every one of our car payments would be going to not only pay decent wages of union workers but also pay for the retirees depending on the value of the stock and the UAW share for their health and welfare.
   I’ll have to keep the Suburban on the road for many more years now, because it will take all of us to make this deal work.

Katrina Mess for Custodians

wade — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:06:02 +0000

New Orleans       When is the Hurricane Katrina damage finally over? Not yet for custodians of the Orleans Parish Public School System it turns out. Most of them were contracted out and lost their jobs or retired after the storm. Our union, Local 100 SEIU, now represents custodians at some of the schools through a subcontractor, but the cruel ironies continue it seems…
   A reporter, Bigad Shaban from WWL-TV, called and is on his way over with a camera crew. They got a tip and walked right into a warehouse in the eastern section of the city, which was heavily flooded, in the 9th ward near Almonaster Street. The building was not locked and in fact was open in three or four places for anyone and everyone to walk right in.
   Most troubling to us was the fact that on the floor open to all were stacks and stacks of personnel files for custodial and maintenance employees. These files are highly confidential and included social security numbers, home addresses, and of course write-ups and reprimands. Big trouble!
   The Orleans Parish School System has obviously been working on an “out of sight, out of mind” policy for over 3 1/2 years, but as a union that represents workers there, this is a frightening disregard for the workers.
   Ironically, had they not tossed away so many custodians at OPPSS, all of this mess would have undoubtedly been cleaned up years and years ago.

Finding New Ways to Organize

wade — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:13:39 +0000

Toronto   Some of the most interesting meetings in my several days in Toronto were with our friends in the Canadian labor movement in Ontario, especially at the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), SEIU Canada, and the Steelworkers. There’s a hunger to organize in most of these unions even though several of them are getting hammered by the current economic implosion and watching membership plummet. Nonetheless the organizers are open and anxious to talk about new ideas, innovations, and other things that might work in the future.
   Our friend, Colin Heslop, who heads the skilled trades department of the CAW, was interested in developments in New Orleans where he and his people had helped us build houses, but it was also fascinating to catch up with him on the organizing developments in the unusual and groundbreaking deal that former CAW President Buzz Hargrove had made with Magma auto parts. Despite the fact that the staff and national executive board had approved this very “different” kind of arrangement with Magma including the no-strike provisions in order to organize more than 30,000 workers, predictably this “concession” had been an issue in the election for Buzz’s successor. All that was old news now, but the agreement with Magma had only netted about 1200 workers of the expected yield to date for various reasons.
   SEIU Canada continued to be heavily engaged in pulling together the building service sector with growing campaigns in Ottawa and emerging efforts in Vancouver. We had a fascinating discussion about living wage campaigns that are heating up in both areas and how this could feed into service-based organizing, as well as the usual wide ranging discussion about targets and opportunities.
   With our friends at Steel, we visited briefly with Canadian USW president Ken Neumann, and then hunkered down with his EA, Ken Delaney, to continue another chapter in the discussions about new innovations in organizing that we had had with him over the years. We caught up on the work with domestic workers which had interested us last year as well as other drives with taxi drivers and university workers which have solid legs. Ken wasted no time recognizing that the last six months had been a blur where most of the time and energy had focused on stopping the membership losses in the mounting recession and blunting their impacts. This had been like the classic “lost weekend,” where time had stopped since our conversations last summer and only now were our friends focusing on organizing again.
   Saying all of that it was exciting to start making plans and brainstorming with our friends and allies again in Canada. They were also interested and supportive of the informal worker organizing we are doing with ACORN International and the lessons we have learned from organizing along “majority union” lines in Wal-Mart. I’m still predicting big things for labor in Canada in the months and years to come.

Life is Not a Beach

wade — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:05:16 +0000

Puerto Playa       After more goodbyes and last minute meetings about plans and problems, we were off in a van offered by the general secretary of an island-wide, 50,000 member transport workers union that we were fortunate to meet our last night in Santiago thanks to one of the organizer’s ingenuity (props to Steffan Lajoie!). This trip was smooth and quick sailing on the main highway rather than the picturesque mountain roads when we first journeyed to Santiago. We had hoped to see the beaches on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic near Puerto Playa before heading off to the still chilly spring in Canada.
   We were not disappointed. The driver drove us through a gated, vacation community near the coast to a still public beach called Treasure Cove by the hopeful developers that was popular with Dominicans. We were the only haoli’s.
   The cove was beautiful. The overcast sky made the water seem cooler than it really was for the first minutes, but once past a then band of rocks, probably planted for a meter or so as a beach protection, the sand was smooth under foot, the waves mild and rolling, and the water a blessing as a few of us took a swim.
   Life is not a beach though, and the reminders were quick in coming in this idyllic setting. The restaurant was run by a white foreigner, and he tried to charge for the banos, defeating the claim to easy living on the coast. The souvenir shop was run by a Haitian. The dishwasher in the restaurant was a Haitian woman. Immigrants were unmistakably on the top and the bottom here.
   The issue of migrant workers from Haiti into the DR is huge here. We met at some length with John Service of the Catholic Relief Service about ways to partner to deal with workers’ rights issues for such workers when we met him in Santo Domingo on Friday. We were all relieved to hear Katia Soriano report on the relative harmony in the neighborhoods between lower income Dominicans and Haitians living side by side.
   Nonetheless it was not a surprise to me as I took my last walk around the beach to see that there was a recycler working along the edges of the crowd, picking up plastic, bottles, and whatever might be sold.   Of course, it was also a Haitian.