You Think Our Failed Merger is a Problem
(AP) – The long-simmering clash between rival factions at the labor union UNITE HERE grew increasingly bitter on Friday as its general president resigned and accused his opponents of breaking into his office to steal sensitive files.
It’s the latest turn in a nasty divorce that has split the union of roughly 400,000 hotel, restaurant and clothing workers and diverted millions into a drawn out legal dispute.  Bruce Raynor, the union’s general president, claimed he was being forced out of his post and said he would take another top spot at a newly formed union affiliated with the Service Employees
International Union.“The situation at UNITE HERE has devolved from sporadic hostile actions to a sustained attack that represents a direct threat to the welfare of our members,” Raynor said. “Our union is in total chaos.”
UNITE HERE was the product of two unions that merged five years ago – the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, headed by Raynor, and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, led by John Wilhelm. But difficulties organizing new members and other disagreements led to mounting tension between the two leaders, and Raynor last year declared the merger a failure. At his urging, about 150,000  dissident members voted to leave the union earlier this year to form a new union called Workers United.
I hear and agree with all who want to merge SAG and AFTRA, but if you try to merge it under rules that come anywhere near the SAG rules, the rules that make sure that the Hollyweird contingent have automatic control as they do under the current SAG rules, i will campaign against it. And if a plan is passed making (for instance) the President necessarily an L.A. denizen and the officers having to be elected by a broad membership who has greater concern for film credits than the ability to govern, I will probably look at the chance of being a fee paying non-member in place of being part of that corrupt club. Please let us learn from the debacles of the past.
I can’t figure out why the needle trades union merged with the hospitality workers union in the first place. Restaurant and hotel employees being in one union, I can understand. How their concerns line up with seamstresses, that I don’t get.
Stuart,
Even before the merger, the two unions represented rather disparate groups. HERE represented campus clerical and maintenance workers, airport retail workers, and other technical and administrative workers as well as the hotel and restaurant workers. UNITE represented workers in retail, auto manufacturing, and direct care for the developmentally disabled as well as the textile and laundry workers. It was a marriage of two polyglots, based strictly on the idea of potential economies of scale. It was doomed from the outset.
Looks to me that SAG is well ahead of the curve. Hell, if you folks can’t excise the cancer that is Membership First, you’ll implode all on your own. Forget merging with AFTRA being the problem.
I’m thinking that …
After two merger votes passed handily with AFTRA members, and
After SAG members failed those same attempts twice, and
After the Phase I debacle launched by SAG in June, 2007, and
After the very public efforts on SAG’s part to fail an AFTRA contract referrendum, and
After all the vilifying of AFTRA by SAG,in their own publications, in the press, and online …
I’m not all that certain that AFTRA is chomping at the bit – at this moment in time – to merge with SAG.
If they are, they need an intervention.
V.
Vested,
I think that AFTRA’s leadership and membership still recognizes that the long-range interests of performers lies in a single union representing all of them. If they’re smart, they’ll entertain discussions on how to achieve that, but keep SAG at arm’s length until there’s some assurance the SAG leadership can control the rabid fringe element.
It has to be distressing to the anti-merger crowd that their self-destructive antics have probably shifted more power to AFTRA in merger discussions. AFTRA now is in a position to set some pre-conditions for serious talks with their schizoid cousins, and they didn’t have that upper hand the last time. Of course, that gives the fringe more reason to suspect a merger (as if they needed it, always knowing they can fabricate arguments on an “as needed” basis as they have before), but it will probably escape them that they were resposible for the shift in power.
P.S. to Mike:
Let me know if this analysis qualifies as me saying “AFTRA can do no wrong in my book.” I asked you to provide some proof that I actually believe that and you have been uncharacteristically silent since then. I just want to know if this is the kind of thing you had in mind when you had that fantasy.
Nuff said?