Working Life's ongoing special section devoted to holding the Cafta Fifteen accountable.
Buy the Wal-Mart documentary for $12.95
« And Back With the Beast | Main | Keeping The Heat On The CAFTA 15 »
August 02, 2005
Here We Come, Raiding or Not
By popular demand...a thread on raiding. What seems to have sparked the particular interest is the battle between AFSCME and SEIU out in Riverside County, California so I've collected and posted a few documents on the subject below.
A few thoughts. Because of the large recent influx of readers, I want to assume that not everyone is a labor movement junkie and understands what "raiding" is. Maybe it's obvious but...the Utne Reader explanation would be: a situation where a union swoops down to snatch away workers that are already represented by a different union. The encroaching union typically gets enough cards signed by workers to force a new representation election under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
What complicates our soap opera today is that when both unions are members of the AFL-CIO, there is a process known as Article XX which forces the combatants to present their case in front of an umpire, who makes a ruling which each union must abide by. The hitch: the process has no force on unions outside the AFL-CIO...so SEIU, the Teamsters and the UFCW no longer have to abide by the process.
Which of course makes all this very messy. In fact, the Article XX process may be one of the few benefits Federation membership conveys to its affiliates.
I've never been a fan of raiding, except in circumstances where one can show outright corruption or malfeasance (the latter often being in the eye of the beholder). It's a waste of time and resources to be fighting over workers who are already in unions. And with 92 percent of the workers in the private sector not in unions, and, thus, living as sitting ducks for abusive corporations, there are plenty of people to recruit.
Having said that, it's pretty clear why unions raid: workers who already have a union are a whole lot easier to convince to join a union, even if that means a little family food-fight.
When the Change To Win coalition was formed, it publicly stated it was not interested in raiding other unions; SEIU, Teamsters and the UFCW have made similar statements in the wake of their disaffiliations. And it would be reasonable to hold each of the unions to those statements.
So, now comes the Riverside fight. The upshot of the fight is this: AFSCME argues that SEIU is raiding its workers. SEIU claims, in a release issued today, that the workers had sought a merger with SEIU and AFSCME is interfering with that process. In the midst of all this, AFSCME put the local, the United Domestic Workers (UDW), in trusteeship (meaning, the local is now being run by someone from the international union) charging mismanagement of finances. The UDW leadership has charged that AFSCME made the move because of the interest in jumping into SEIU's arms.
Let's hope that, in the new labor world we live in, this dispute ends up being an anomaly. There's plenty of work to be done. Raiding is the great sucking sound of the labor movement descending further into irrelevancy.
August 2, 2005 in Labor | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451b76269e200d83451085d53ef
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Here We Come, Raiding or Not:
Comments
The "raiding" question was at the heart of the split. Some of the CTW Unions wanted Article XX and XXI to help workers by ensuring that the best Union for the job was organizing those workers, instead of the first Union on the scene. Too much low hanging fruit eating to keep the status quo, so says the CTW perspective.
Reasonable minds can disagree, but one Union's "raiding" is another Union's "making sure the members can get a decent contract".
Posted by: LaborDude | Aug 2, 2005 9:42:41 AM
I know this is a tender topic for some, but it has been at the heart of reformers argument for years. This whole question of "ownership" by unions of workers has been beaten to death.
We hate when monopolies exist. No one likes being held captive to a company that has exclusive "rights" to a given service. Most of us believe there should be a reasonable return for the money we spend.
What makes unions above that premise? Why is that a bunch of old fat white guys are able to do a lousy job representing workers and still keep their 6 figure salaries? Why is it they can offer their families jobs and control their own little kingdoms without repercussion? Mind you i'm not even talking about the crooks who are prosecuted and carted off to jail, i'm talking about lazy, ineffective leadership who manage to do little while making a lot for themselves.
Spare me the crap on booting them out of office. These kinds of leaders have usually written gawd aweful by-laws that make it near impossible to win. The figures on incumbants winning elections for union offices are staggering.
While many of you/us don't like the idea of raids, workers having a real voice is something i suspect most us support. The question becomes, how do we get there from here? Clearly the model we are in has been ineffective in giving members an adequate say in who owns them. As labor is rebuilt, is there a way to insure workers aren't just part and parcel of another monopoly and treated as such?
Posted by: Bill Pearson | Aug 2, 2005 10:05:09 AM
Bill, you and I seem to be on the same page. As I travel the country visiting with members of the union for whom I work, I see the disconnect on an almost daily basis. Certainly within the union at which I work, there is no sense of commonality, of governance by and for the people, or any notion that we are in this together. The basic belief is "better we have you when we don't need you, than to need you and not have you." The point you make is really, IMHO, the true point of the reform that is needed. Other than the truly committed, there is very little activity by the rank and file in getting their voice back from the "old, fat, white guys." I don't have the answer, simply because I ain't all that smart, and secondly because this has become very clear to me in just the recent past. I will look into what I can do to engage the rank and file in becoming more responsible for their union and their worklife.
Posted by: Kevin F Droste | Aug 2, 2005 10:34:25 AM
Here's the problem that I see with raiding.
I'm sitting in a bar with my girfriend. She buys me a drink, tells me to cheer up. I'm totally bummed out, moaning and complaining. She's trying her damndest now, really giving me a reason to believe that if I just snap out of it, we can turn things around. She's always been a giving, considerate, woman and she's proving it right there. But I just can't see it, for whatever reason, and I just don't pay attention to what she has to say. She starts to feel hurt now and tears up a little. Before she can full-on cry, I head for the bathroom shouting "Now the waterworks start."
Now you've been sitting at the bar too, drinking and watching this ordeal. I obviously appear ridiculous, but the girlfriend seems worth her salt and in need of some bolstering. You talk and after a few minutes, you begin to find yourself attracted to my girlfriend. You tell yourself that it's okay, too, because the attraction is mutual and I'm a big jerk who doesn't listen. You invite her to leave with you, and as you get up and pay for your drinks, I walk over. I point to your girlfriend, who's currently crying in the corner...
Here's where paths diverge:
In the movement, we seem to think that we know best all the time. As a collective, we can agree on a course of action that can best help all of us, but we hate to even think that singularly we might just be stupid. The truth is, regardless of how awesome you think your organizing model is, or how sweet of a rap you think you've got, or how much money your organizing department has, Members Run Their Union and it is their job to make changes by being an informed body.
Members are often kept out of the loop by an exaggerated process and convoluted rules and regs. If we wanted them to feel good about their participation and fight hard for their contracts, we'd involve them in a real way and sincerely support them when times got hard.
The sad truth is that none of that happens. Usually once they are members they are dutifully ignored until we need volunteer ridealong partners for housecalls or until contract time rolls around and we send out the fleet of reps. We don't talk to them unless we think we need them, and that's just foolish. I've seen it in the internationals I've worked for and it never makes for a good situation.
Getting back to the analogy, you're not paying attention to your own partner. It's fine to make friends, but you're obviously not doing that. What you are doing is looking for a way to increase your own happiness with the caveat that you're doing something good for something else so it must make it okay to cheat on your girlfriend. I might be a jerk sometimes, but I'm her jerk...sometimes. You weren't there when I was there for her birthdays and weddings and funerals. You haven't been on our dates or read our love letters. You haven't been there long at all, and really couldn't hear so good from your barstool anyway. So what makes you think you could even do better? You don't even know her yet. You don't know how demanding a relationship can be on both sides in our case. I work all the time away from home and she needs more support. But she also needs me to go out and get that money so we can both eat. While it's not romantic, it's the truth. And the truth builds relationships, not drinks at a bar with some guy with a good shirt on and some hair product. Because tomorrow, you'll look just as grimey as me, you'll just be a different dude. And you'll go to work too, because you can't eat off love, as hard as we try to.
Speaking of love, I'm not making fun. I'm just a simple dude who thinks that as complicated as things get, we should keep it simple and make explanations a little less complicated.
Just the facts,
Reece Chenault
Posted by: Reece Chenault | Aug 2, 2005 10:36:33 AM
Fun analogy, but labor relations are disimilar to romantic relationships in too many ways. The most important being that there is no contract to compare when you're dating different people.
But you can look at a group of workers, and look at their current contract, look at the "raiding" union's contracts in similar markets, look at each Union's political clout, number of members, experience in organizing that particular kind of work, etc, and make real comparisons to determine who can do a better job of representing those workers.
This is not to say that International and Local Unions across the spectrum continually forget to build the Union after getting the contract. The disconnect is a huge problem that both sides of the current split need to work on continually.
But as far as raiding goes, to many, it's not always as simple as the hawk swooping into the bar looking for neglected girlfriends, and then being a bad match because he or she wasn't around for all the good and bad times of the past. Sometimes, the hawk is just simply the better bird for the job.
Posted by: LaborDude | Aug 2, 2005 10:59:12 AM
isn't there a major disparity between seiu and afscme homecare contracts in CA? i was under the impression that in addition to organize less than half the workers afscme has gotten them subpar contracts. this perhaps is why monoploies are not good.
Posted by: Ray | Aug 2, 2005 11:00:34 AM
I think what's interesting here is that there seems to be an agreement that where a union is pathetic, corrupt or represents the members poorly, it's hard to defend the idea that workers deserve a better union. The problem becomes--who defines the criteria for an "allowable" or "justified" raid? (which is the point LaborDude makes at the end of his first comment). It really is often in the eye of the beholder. Raiding does not make the labor movement bigger but, I suppose, it can make it better--in certain circumstances.
Posted by: Tasini | Aug 2, 2005 11:10:18 AM
SEIU's determination not to raid rings hollow when they just flooded Philadelphia with a hundred organizers who are trying to take Henry Nicolas' 1199 out from under AFSCME. Or the organizers undercutting AFSCME 1199J's Joe Franklin in New Jersey.
Maybe we'll hear charges of corruption, sub-par contracts and affiliation from SEIU then, too.
It's amazing that SEIU is claiming Utd. Domestic Workers tried to affiliate. After all, such an attempt would have been made PRIOR to SEIU's disaffiliation. At that time, the mediator found that SEIU had purposefully interfered with UDW's relationship with AFSCME. Now, suddenly, it's "affiliation" and "worker voice" and "democracy".
I haven't smelled so much crap since my last visit to the Kansas City stockyards.
Posted by: Jon-Jon | Aug 2, 2005 11:16:59 AM
I just glanced over Article XX and it doesn't appear to include any criteria to guide the rulings of arbitrators. I think we can all agree that in general, raiding is distasteful and counterproductive, but that there are specific cases when it may be warranted. I'd suggest that such specific cases include:
When Local X represents a bargaining unit within a market which is overwhelmingly organized and represented by Local Y, and Local Y is successfully setting new industry standards in that market, and Local X is unable or unwilling to commit its resources to matching those standards within its isolated bargaining unit. In such a scenario an Article XX appeal in defense of the right of representation of Local X should be denied.
In other words, if you're a union who's jealously clinging to a single bargaining unit without trying to organize the rest of the industry while another union is organizing the hell out of that industry and setting new standards, but you refuse to put those same standards in your proposal to your single-bargaining-unit employer when the contract expires, then it's in defense of worker power in that industry and in defense of those specific workers in your bargaining unit for that other union to raid you.
Posted by: Leighton Woodhouse | Aug 2, 2005 12:27:43 PM
I have a feeling that the truth of what's happening in California, or Iowa or Philly won't come out on a discussion board (although I'd welcome more links to documents like any Article XX ruling...). Given that, it seems best to talk about the relative merits of raiding and jurisdiction without getting into a he said, she said fight.
With some exceptions (I'm talking corrupt unions that sign sweetheart deals), workers are going to be better off with a union contract. Those same workers will be better off, however, if they work in concert with other union members that can affect wages and conditions positively. That means folks working for the same company, same industry, or in some places, in the same geographic region joining the same union.
HERE is a great example: HERE built its power by negotiating good contracts in cities. They were able to transform Las Vegas by taking on an industry within a contained market. But they saw a problem; other casino regions were popping up - Mississippi with private gaming, California with native gaming. These markets are threats to the Las Vegas contract, so the union developed a coherent national organizing plan. They tried to line up contracts, fight for card check, all the stuff that wins fights.
So if any union: The IBT, CWA, UAW, USW or anyone else looks at casinos and thinks, “I’m going to get in on that”, it undermines the Las Vegas workers. This is true even if the workers at a non HERE casino get a better contract than Vegas because the leverage the other union had, was the fact that they weren’t HERE. If they aren’t going to go and organize the other casino workers, they’re not helping anyone but themselves. Now if HERE did a crappy job or wasn’t making any headway (which even with the failure to line up Atlantic City with Vegas, is a hard case to make) or wasn’t thinking long term, it might make sense to let every union loose to see what works, but that’s not the case in gaming or hotels. I know I’ll get shit for this and it’s even a hard thing to write, but the unorganized workers at hotels shouldn’t have a choice which union they want, they should have a choice in how their union is run.
Having a coherent national or region plan should be the litmus test for raiding (and I’d argue, new organizing), which doesn’t really solve the AFSCME / SEIU debate, except I’ve heard that SEIU has over 300,000 home care workers, while AFSCME only has the folks in UDW, which certainly favors SEIU…
I'm not sure this is the fundamental divide between the CtW and the AFL (given that the IBT and UFCW have so far only paid lip service to being truly industrial unions), but for me this is why I support what SEIU and UNITE HERE are trying to do. I still don’t get why the CWA and AFSCME reacted so viscerally to the NUP and I’d love to know what broke down talks with the UAW. Everything I’ve read, suggests ego (and not just Andy Sterns) if that’s the case, then I don’t look forward to the next few years.
Posted by: Adam Chervin | Aug 2, 2005 12:42:41 PM
Glad you enjoyed the analogy.
That analogy, while light-hearted, has a lot to do with our relationships with workers. I don't know about you, but when I'm with someone, I've made a commitment. Unions, on the average, do the same thing, but don't come through on their commitments in the end. You said it yourself, it's a problem. But you don't pay any more attention to it than that. Why?
And JT, is it always about getting a better union? Who's making the decision that the union is better? The union inititiating the raid? Or the workers seeking representation?
Posted by: Reece Chenault | Aug 2, 2005 12:49:38 PM
it really isn't that tough to make the case that HERE hasn't made much headway in the gaming industry.
just look at mississippi. those casinos are owned by the same companies HERE represents in nevada and new jersey, and the union failed to make a play to organize them when they first went up.
just look at conneticuit. those casinos are taking customers from a.c., and foxwoods is one of the largest in the world. HERE's efforts to organize there consisted of well-written oped pieces in the WSJ and sending people to speak at panels at yale. eventually the union gave up.
and now that they have merged with UNITE, they figured they'd go spend some money and strike AC, and by all accounts there it was a miserable failure.
HERE has had success in las vegas, true. las vegas is a successful town for working folks, and other unions have grown there as well. if it wasn't for steve wynn, the boss, HERE would still be down on freemont street with the bums and hookers.
i remain unimpressed with their "national strategy" to organize our industry.
having said all of that, i'm going to support what they do, because i agree that one union should represent the entire industry to maximize our strength.
Posted by: casino worker | Aug 2, 2005 1:25:28 PM
Casino Worker (if you really are):
On Mississippi: UNITE HERE just won card checks last week for the 4 Harrahs casinos in Mississippi and is laying plans to organize the rest.
On Atlantic City: I hardly think that winning the best and most expensive contract that the casino industry has ever faced is a "miserable failure."
On National Strategy: I've already cited Mississippi. Detroit is wall-to-wall union. Illinois and Indiana are mostly union, with more victories regularly (Caesars boat in So. Indiana late last year as an example). There are active organizing drives going at several CA tribal casinos - some of which are close to being completed.
And on Vegas: I think that there are a lot of workers in Vegas who would beg to differ with you about why their union is strong. Steve Wynn didn't go on strike for over 6 years at the Frontier. Steve Wynn didn't battle it out at the Horseshoe. Steve Wynn is not the reason that the Culinary Union is strong. The workers are.
I'm impressed, I'm sorry you aren't. Your bar must be pretty high.
Posted by: sagev | Aug 2, 2005 1:49:07 PM
It's never simple.
First, in defense of old fat white dudes, one of the "benefits" of my old diverse union, AFSCME, is that sometimes you had the same problems with skinny black guys and well-proportioned Hispanic women. Lazyness and corruption know no gender or ethnicity.
Second, also back at AFSCME, some of the most frequent raids were against our correctional officers, usually by independent upstart unions that played on the uniformed CO's desire to feel special, different and separate from the soft, liberal social worker types. Of course, the upstarts didn't know shit about what it really takes to represent these workers or win good contracts. (On the other hand, the AFSCME representation could have been more dynamic as well.)
Then you had the fights over public employees who had just received collective bargaining rights and were ripe for easy organizing.You had industrial unions competing for this low hanging fruit and often winning more on the basis of tradition (many workers' family members belonged or had belonged to the industrial unions) than on ability. It turns out that representing public employees is a learned skill different from representing industrial workers -- a fact that the newly organized workers only figured out when it was too late.
Then you have the public employees who are also health care workers. Or the public employees who are also construction workers. Who do they belong to in a federation that is divided up by sector?
And then what happens when an entire sector is given to a union that can't organize itself out of a paper bag, nor can it represent workers effectively? Does that whole sector just get written off even when there are unions that could more effectively represent them?
I don't have the answers to any of these scenarios. But the fact is that no structure is perfect, there needs to be some flexibility and exceptions, and although there needs to be consensus within a federation, trying to keep any organization moving forward by operating exclusively through consenus is a prescription for drift.
Now that I've cleared all that up.....
Posted by: Jordan Barab | Aug 2, 2005 2:02:51 PM
I agree with the concept that there should be 1 union for an industry to build power, etc., but I pose a question. I live in a part of the country where our HERE local is really bad. min. wage contracts, pretty corrupt boss, holdover from pre-wilhelm days. My wife works in the industry and she wants to go union, as well as her entire restaurant. It is a small chain, and the whole company is pretty ripe for the picking (speaking of low hanging fruit). But the local won't organize them (new members would be a threat to the corrupt power base), nor do they really want to be a part of that. And, no other AFL union will touch because working at a bar is pretty obvious jurasdictionally (is that a word?)....
so what does one do in this situation? start an indy union? later affiliate with a cleaned up HERE local once they finally trustee it? I don't know.
Posted by: curious | Aug 2, 2005 2:13:52 PM
So, if you can't do the job, you shouldn't have the job. If you can't compete, then that's too bad. The whole is strengthened by this sort of darwinian approach. I think I understand the point of the pro raid people here.
But I would like some of them to try to explain why they are in favor of this approach to raiding and against it on CAFTA.
Posted by: benton | Aug 2, 2005 2:16:41 PM
Reece: the questions you ask are the ones I asked. Who decides when a union is not serving its members and, therefore, deserves to be raided? I think the other issues brought up quite nicely by others re: unions that can't organize and/or are not organizing in core jurisdiction would be solved, partly, by having some coherent national organizing strategy. But, that after all, was some of what the recent debate was about.
There are no easy answers to the question how one slices up jurisdictions but I also don't think it would be that hard to figure out--if unions could give up on (a) going after the low-hanging fruit--as Jordan says--and (b) phony "independence" which translates into doing whatever the F--- they feel like doing regardless of what that means for the entire labor movement.
Posted by: Tasini | Aug 2, 2005 2:38:21 PM
the forming consensus seems to be that if everyone is doing an optimal job raiding is unnecessary as each union would have a national strategy which is invested in and successful. there is some divergence on what to do when that doesn't happen. if a union is selfishly holding onto a small bargaining unit in an industry being mostly represented by another union which gets better contracts the union with the smaller unit should voluntarily give up that unit presuming the workers agree.
Re: CAFTA--> under what circumstances we would expand the global market place is a more complicated question. your sarcastic argument is simplistic. you say that it is hypocritical to support certain kinds of "raids" and oppose cafta. the raids i sometimes think are good involve creating competition within a specific geographical area, generally a few dozen square miles. CAFTA isn't about competition within a specific geographical area but rather about expanding the market to include several sovereign nations some of which lack labor and environmental protections. with regards to american unions, everyone can compete on more or less equal footing, afscme and seiu are accountable to the same nlrb regs and the same system labor law. competition on equal footing is different from interstate competition where different firms have different laws that apply. competition within a market is different from expanding a market to alter the competitive landscape. that argument is a piece of sophistry.
also, sorry for the typos in my last post, it was written in haste.
Posted by: Ray | Aug 2, 2005 2:43:41 PM
also, thanks JT for providing the best labor content around. i thouroughly enjoy your blog and check it all the time!
Posted by: Ray | Aug 2, 2005 2:45:14 PM
Curious-
I think you have identified one of the few very serious problems with "core industry strategic organizing." The problem is that by totally shunning "hot shop" organizing a lot of workers out there are going to have to go without a voice. Even workers in a well-defined core industry will find themselves in this predicament if the union assigned to their industry has targeted other employers and does not want to "waste" resources working with a measly 50 workers spread between two or more restaraunts to win a voice on the job. You could try contacting UE (United Electrical), an independent union. Other than that, I don't know...
Posted by: Mike | Aug 2, 2005 2:48:45 PM
you could also contact unite-here, perhaps they have been looking for amunition to trustee the corrupt local.
Posted by: Ray | Aug 2, 2005 3:57:36 PM
Tasini missed saying that the Article XX rules weren't just silent, they were bad on criteria. Who gets there first rules, ahead of what union unites the workers in that industry for maximum strength.
The AFL-CIO as an institution, as a culture, as a structure, failed the California homecare workers to begin with because the AFL-CIO had no way to get the workers together and say you should be in one union, not two or more, and figure that out with them. So SEIU accepted the reality that it would have to "give" some of the workers to AFSCME to buy peace. That's how the whole mess started years ago.
No one knows whether now that SEIU and AFSCME are not both in the AFL-CIO they will try to reach some kind of overall national agreement that both unites workers and avoids wars. I sure hope so, but there hasn't been anything about it in the news. My admittedly uneducated guess is that the reason these fights like California homecare are popping up right now is that the two of them are maneuvering for advantage while they see if an agreement is going to happen or not.
I hope that the Change to Win unions will operate differently than the AFL-CIO and will make decisions based on what gives the workers the strongest union and not who gets what piece of what.
Posted by: LaborVet | Aug 2, 2005 4:18:59 PM
Ray
I'm not trying to be sarcastic at all. I just think you are completely wrong about this. Simply put, by advocating for raiding you are adopting the idea that a more unfeterred market can be expected to lead to better outcomes for workers. CAFTA itself is a set of rules that govern trade, and as such provide a playing field for multinationals, with the purported goal of leading to better outcomes for consumers. I understand that not every market is the same, and some are more efficient than others, but I also understand the limits to this logic. I don't think the people making this argument have specifically thought about what they are saying, with the possible exception of Andy Stern, who has some odd quotes here and there about markets.
As for "if a union is selfishly holding onto a small bargaining unit in an industry being mostly represented by another union which gets better contracts the union with the smaller unit should voluntarily give up that unit presuming the workers agree."
Well, it seems to me that the issue of unions lacking the resources to hold up their end is something that happens within internationals to the same or greater extent as across internationals. And to some extent, fighting the man is hard, and when you don't get what you want its easy to point fingers. Particularly at other unions. This is a real problem. Let me repeat, this is a real problem. But for purposes of this debate its overblown. We're getting our ass kicked for reasons external to us more than internal.
Moreover, there are ways to address this problem absent raiding. The industrial council proposals that both CTW and AFL-CIO floated both were efforts to do this. Its the road not taken. I'm just of the opinion that given the forces arrayed against us solidarity --and not turning on eachother --is the better path.
But my real point is this: Does all this talk about raiding strike anyone else as an ultimately Spencerian method of strengthening the herd? Are we social Darwinists? If we really wanted to make workers more powerful, shouldn't we just throw them all in a pit and let them fight it out on their own?
That throw them all in a pit comment was mostly a joke. But the idea that this sort of marketplace competition will lead to people getting something better strikes me as unsound. Is Coke a better product than Pepsi? Wal-Mart cleans up in the marketplace, etc. There are people who like a particular union because of the brand, but don't know anything more -- about the contract, representation, etc.
Its odd that the people who have the most reason to be suspicious of the benefits of markets -- experienced unionists -- are the ones making this argument.
And let me take another tack. Do you think that if people shop for a different union rather than build one themselves that somehow they'll come out any more organized and powerful than at the start? And why do you think the choice is going to be made on the basis of the right things? When do the massive dues deductions kick in for members and not internationals?
It might be that union democracy as a method of accountability is dead. I've suspected it for some time. When real unionists like you think the market is the solution to our problems,then that's what I'm forced to conclude.
Posted by: benton | Aug 2, 2005 4:25:50 PM
Benton,
your mistake is not realizing the difference between a mostly unified system with occasional "raids" and a totally competative market.
i am not, and i don't think anyone else is, suggesting raids with any frequency. clearly in general its better to worry about the workers with no unions in non-unionized industries.
its better for workers for unions to stop fighting over low-hanging fruit and start fighting new unionization battles.
the problems that raids fix are significant but not the most important.
the issue in CA is that a smaller union is selfishly standing in the way of statewide density. that hurts the workers in their union, the bigger union, and the unionized.
that is bad for workers.
i'de really rather unions figure out how to trazde units to create strength (like unite-here and ufcw). those sorts of realignments are the best way to end these turf fights.
raids are a bad place to end up but under a very narrow set of circumstances seem to be good for workers and labor. those circumstances only arrive when a union is acting in the union's interest rather than labor or the workers interest by messing around outside its core industry/industries.
Posted by: Ray | Aug 2, 2005 5:12:33 PM
I AM a casino employee in Detroit, but I'm not an HERE member. I work in the casino, not the hotel, so I'm a member of the UAW. I have said often that we should be a part of HERE but this is how the deal was cut, we had no say in it.
That's fine enough, Id rather have a union than not have a union.
As far as your other comments...
I'm sorry but everyone who followed the strike in AC knows that the casinos offered a deal early on and the strike was holding out to line up the expiration dates. In the end, they decided to go back in and take the deal without the expiration date. Not only did it probably cost the local a ton of money, it probably required an enormous personal sacrafice on the part of the members who actually struck. I don't doubt that the union told the members what they were striking for, and that the members on the line believed in it, but the reality is that not many people actually walked anyway. Its hard to spin it in to a victory, try as you might.
No, my bar isn't too high. If i was in AC I would have struck and I would have trusted the leadership when they said "this is the best we can get." But I don't think people can go around touting HERE in the casino industry as some kind of successful national strategy.
It seems to me that where HERE can get a card check deal BEFORE a casino goes up they wire it. But where they missed out on putting together those kinds of deals (MS, CT, CA) they are having a terrible time of trying to organize the workers and are still trying to figure out how to get a deal.
No national strategies are going to work without mobilizing the ground. SEIU is trying to get a national deal for the janitors, but they are mobilizing thousands of workers in the streets of Houston and around the country. They aren't afraid to mix it up and fight the boss. HERE seems petrified.
Posted by: casino worker | Aug 2, 2005 6:07:20 PM
