Features » August 12, 2004

Come Together Right Now

Labor unions reconfigure to battle huge multinationals

By David Moberg

A new campaign launched by SEIU and UNITE HERE will target Sodexho workers, such as hospital cook Linda Owens.

Since last fall, organized labor has urgently focused on defeating George Bush—described by AFL-CIO president John Sweeney as “the worst president we’ve had to deal with.” Even if Kerry should win, the labor movement faces a wrenching debate over its future starting the day after the election.

Despite Sweeney’s reform victory nearly a decade ago, the labor movement has made progress mainly in its political work, not in the crucial task of organizing in a globalized economy where many workers’ jobs are moved out of the country and U.S. workers increasingly face powerful multinational corporations.

The debate after the election will focus on what kinds of changes labor must make to expand its ranks and its power. One key group of labor leaders argues that, much as labor in the ’30s grew when new CIO unions organized according to industries rather than crafts, unions must now create structures to confront industries dominated by a few multinational corporations. To do this, unions must update their approach to organizing members, holding politicians accountable, recruiting public support, and creating the structures needed for solidarity and power.

The challenge was taken up this summer when two aggressive but small unions—UNITE (historically apparel and textile workers) and HERE (hotel and restaurant workers)—merged to form UNITE HERE.

“This merger is about dealing with globalization,” said John Wilhelm, former leader of HERE, who will effectively be a co-president with UNITE’s Bruce Raynor of the merged union.

UNITE has strong finances and talented staff, but a vanishing traditional industry. The apparel and textile unions that much earlier merged into UNITE represented 1 million workers 25 years ago, but UNITE entered the recent merger with only 190,000 workers. Yet UNITE has successfully organized many workers in recent years, including about 40,000 industrial laundry workers and those in apparel distribution and sales.

HERE, with about 250,000 workers, has great opportunities to organize hotels, casinos and food service providers—jobs that are hard to move out of the country. But it lacks resources—especially in the post-9/11 hospitality industry slump. In these domestically anchored industries, the union increasingly confronts not local owners, as in the past, but a small number of large multinational corporations with enormous power.

The merger doesn’t create a union with one easily identifiable sector, but the merger makes sense because it matches resources and opportunities, and both unions have worked extensively with immigrants and workers of color—disproportionately women—in typically low-wage industries. The merger will succeed, Wilhelm argues, if the new union organizes more new members than the two would have separately.

While pledging support to its old apparel and textile base, UNITE HERE will downplay organizing workers exposed to the global market and instead “will organize the jobs that can’t be exported,” Wilhelm says. It will attempt to make the low-wage jobs of the Wal-Martized service economy into solid middle-class jobs, much as unionization historically raised standards for poorly paid manufacturing workers.

Much as UNITE HERE leaders hope that their merger will set an example for other unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the largest and fastest growing union in the AFL-CIO, hopes to inspire other unions to focus on a few core industries and their dominant employers to build union power. SEIU, which will have 1.8 million members by the year’s end, announced plans this summer to strengthen the union by going global, organizing in regions where it is weak (like the South), creating stronger industrial divisions, and building its community, political and local power. SEIU will launch a virtual, Internet-based arm of the union that opens membership—which SEIU President Andy Stern hopes will hit 1 million—to anyone who wants to support SEIU objectives. In collaboration with UNITE HERE and unions around the world, Stern announced an innovative campaign this summer to organize Sodexho, a French-owned multinational provider of outsourced food, janitorial and other services. Globally Sodexho and two other multinationals, Aramark and Compass, are the dominant “multi-service” corporations, employing 1.1 million workers.

But Stern, Raynor and Wilhelm also have set their sights on transforming the structure of the labor movement, including the AFL-CIO. SEIU and UNITE HERE, along with the Laborers and the Carpenters (which left the AFL-CIO in 2001), linked up last year as the New Unity Partnership (NUP) to support each other in organizing and to promote change in the labor movement. They contend that the 60 unions now in the AFL-CIO should consolidate into 15 to 20 large unions focused on broadly defined industries, unlike the loose federation it currently is, to organize campaigns at major employers on a much grander, even global scale. These NUP leaders emphasize that they are determined to take “the leading role to lead labor out of this wilderness” of recent years, Raynor says. Stern says bluntly, “We need to transform the AFL-CIO or build something new.”

The problem with the AFL-CIO is its structure, not president Sweeney, Stern says, and both Raynor and Wilhelm praised Sweeney for his efforts. Sweeney in turn praised the value of their challenges and dissent and echoed many of their complaints about other unions. While it is still possible that someone, perhaps Wilhelm or Laborers president Terry O’Sullivan could challenge Sweeney for reelection next year, there are signs that NUP leaders could support Sweeny if he is wiling to push hard for reforms, such as enforceable rules on mergers and organizing, many of which he has long advocated.

At next year’s AFL-CIO convention, Stern says he will propose giving the AFL-CIO more authority to “stop bad mergers,” to prevent unions from organizing in areas where other unions have started campaigns or have organized extensively, and to prohibit unions from undercutting each other with substandard contracts. There also must be meaningful penalties for unions that violate such rules, Stern says.

“I would hope [Sweeney] would lead, but that’s a decision he would have to make,” Stern says. “The question is, ‘What does the AFL-CIO believe in enough to fight for?’ This is not a time of consensus. It’s a time for leadership.” It’s also a time, Stern says, to involve union members, not just top leaders, in a debate about the future of the labor movement. If Sweeney or someone else can’t forge a stronger AFL-CIO, the NUP leaders hint that they could turn to other structures. “We are a divided labor movement that talks about unity,” Stern says. “At some point people will do what’s best for their members.” That may start with defeating Bush, but that’s only a start.

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• Reader Comments

  The changes Stern proposes such as “to prevent unions from organizing in areas where other unions have started campaigns or have organized extensively” are the very infractions being committed by one of the founding members of this New Unity Partnership—Douglas J. McCarron of the Carpenters Union.

    Stern is a Bush puppet whose purpose is to help Bush destroy the American Labor movement. Stern supports granting legal status to the 9 million+ illegal immigrants so that even more US citizens can have their wages eroded and/or lose their jobs.

  Posted by BRaker on Aug 13, 2004 at 1:38 AM

  I have worked in union and non-union shops and the only difference that I have seen is that in a union shop you not only have to watch your back from the company ,you also have to watch your back from the union.
  These union bigwigs have the same problem that congress and the president have,they only watch out for number ONE not the members.

  Posted by Ed Pleskovitch on Aug 13, 2004 at 3:27 PM

  This article does a good job of covering the push toward organizing by the NUP leadership, but it leaves out any criticism of their faction. All the NUP’s plans are designed and carried out without the involvement or decisions of the members. I have been a labor union member and activist for over 15 years, and in my experience, the way to get unions moving again is to end the domination by a few officers and instead return the power to the membership. This is not wasy - it requires a lot of education and internal organizing and well as external organizing, but the alternative is unions that belong to the professional officers rather the members.

  Posted by Joshua DeVries on Aug 13, 2004 at 5:07 PM

  The new attack on Stern and the NUP as “Bush puppets” is getting old quickly and just reflects the current trend of slapping anything “bad” with a Bush tag.  If Raker isn’t an activist in the “trades” (the old craft unionism much despised for decades and targeted by the NUP) then I’d be shocked.  The nativism gives it away. 

  As for Pleskovitch, these libertarian “voices” often have much to fear because they have much to hide….from everyone.

  Freeze is more on the mark, but the age-old problem for the type of democratic unionism he hopes for often excludes staff and others who are thinking beyond the next grievance or contract….people like Stern (who comes out of the rank anf file, mind). 

  I find Stern to be a promoter and champion for democratic unionism, coupled with the vision of leaders with foresight (sometimes) afflicted with not having worked as a janitor.  The problems with SEIU during Stern’s tenure often result from locals who have not fully embraced democratic unionism (usually in the building services base or public sector), matters which Stern has limited control.  When the International decides that a local has gone too far and puts them into trusteeship, it’s the voices of like Pleskovitch and Raker who cry “foul”.  And they deserve to be heard, Joshua.

  The NUP is a coalition pushing for a debate about Labor’s future, with an action plan attached for once.

  Posted by Matthew Vernon on Aug 13, 2004 at 6:39 PM

  Ed-

  the only difference that I have seen is that in a union shop you not only have to watch your back from the company ,you also have to watch your back from the union.

  Exactly.

  My father was a steelworker(USWA local #2173) during the sixties and seventies.  The steel industry was crushed during the late seventies. They struggled along thru the eighties.  The Timken bearing plant here in Columbus that he worked at is now a hole in the ground.

  My mother was a unionized grocery cashier in the seventies and eighties(UFCW local #1059).  They were stabbed in the back by the union(after a year long strike, they capitulated *completely*)- and Columbus (Ohio) is now a non-union grocery town.

  I’ve never seen any union official lose a job… unless it was for corruption.

  Posted by scott on Aug 13, 2004 at 11:02 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 16 posts.

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