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Union Leaders Accuse Stern of Scheming for Control of America’s Only Union-Owned Commercial Bank February 21, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Labor.
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In his latest column for the New York Daily News, Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez writes, “Last year alone, Amalgamated Bank’s profits provided more than $23 million to UNITE HERE for its everyday operations. Some leaders of the union accuse one of the country’s most powerful labor leaders, Andy Stern, of the Service Employees International Union, of scheming to seize control of the bank in a corporate-style takeover.”

AMY GOODMAN: You wrote an interesting piece, before we move on with our new segment, on a big battle brewing within unions.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yes, another battle has now erupted in the so-called reform wing of the American labor movement. Now, the UNITE HERE, which is the large union that represents hotel workers, garment workers, textile workers—it was actually a merger of two unions that occurred about five years ago. And UNITE HERE now has a major battle that has implications beyond its union, because the SEIU has also become involved, Andy Stern, Service Employees International Union, the largest—the fastest-growing union in America.

Apparently, the original merger of UNITE HERE had Bruce Raynor, the former head of UNITE, as the president of the merged union and John Wilhelm, who was the head of the hotel workers, as the second in command of the new merged union.

But there’s been a lot of battles internally between the two camps since they’ve been merged, and the big battle is over the bank that the union has, the only union-owned bank in America, commercial break, the Amalgamated Bank, which has about $5 billion in assets. I call it one of the crown jewels of the American labor movement. And that bank produces—for instance, last year, it produced $23 million in profits that all went to help fund the union’s activities.

But now, as the battle has erupted, John Wilhelm looks likely to be elected the new president of UNITE HERE, and the Raynor forces are battling against that. They want a divorce. They say that the marriage has not worked; after five years, they want a divorce. And they want to move their entire operation into, apparently, SEIU. And the problem is that the union constitution that everyone approved does not allow a secession. And so, now there is basically a scorched earth battle between the two sides, with Wilhelm trying to keep UNITE HERE together and Raynor, in essence, it appears to be, working cooperatively with Andy Stern to tear his own union apart and take his section over to SEIU.

Of course, I’ve called—in my column today, I called SEIU the Roman Empire of the American labor movement. They keep expanding and absorbing new additions into their growing empire. And I talked with Stern about that yesterday. He acknowledged that he is working very hard to convince UNITE HERE that they would be better off as members of SEIU, and he’s got lawyers and a whole bunch of people working to make that possible. But the rest of the labor movement, I think, considers that interference in the internal affairs of a fraternal organization.

And so, I don’t know what’s going to happen now, but I do think that this is a bad sign now that SEIU, which was leading the reform movement when they split off from the AFL-CIO to establish Change to Win, is now embroiled in yet another battle, which looks very much like the old battles in the labor movement for pure control by union leaders over resources, money and members. So we’ll see how it works out over the next few months.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ll certainly continue to follow that story.

UAW Busting, Southern Style December 18, 2008

Posted by rogerhollander in Economic Crisis, Labor.
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www.truthout.org

18 December 2008

by: Bruce Raynor, The Los Angeles Times

Foreign carmakers are enlisting the help of GOP senators from states in the South to break the union.

    The foreign nonunion auto companies located in the South have a plan to reduce wages and benefits at their factories in the United States. And to do it, they need to destroy the United Auto Workers.

    Last week, Senate Republicans from some Southern states went to work trying to do just that, on the foreign car companies’ behalf. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Bob Corker ( R-Tenn.) and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) – representatives from states that subsidize companies such as Honda, Volkswagen, Toyota and Nissan – first tried to force the UAW to take reductions in wages and benefits as a condition for supporting the auto industry bailout bill. When the UAW refused, those senators torpedoed the bill.

    They claimed that they couldn’t support the bill without specifics about how wages would be “restructured.” They didn’t, however, require such specificity when it came to bailing out the financial sector. Their grandstanding, and the government’s generally lackluster response to the auto crisis, highlight many of the problems that have caused our current economic mess: the lack of concern about manufacturing, the privileged way our government treats the financial sector, and political support given to companies that attempt to slash worker’s wages.

    When one compares how the auto industry and the financial sector are being treated by Congress, the double standard is staggering. In the financial sector, employee compensation makes up a huge percentage of costs. According to the New York state comptroller, it accounted for more than 60% of 2007 revenues for the seven largest financial firms in New York.

    At Goldman Sachs, for example, employee compensation made up 71% of total operating expenses in 2007. In the auto industry, by contrast, autoworker compensation makes up less than 10% of the cost of manufacturing a car. Hundreds of billions were given to the financial-services industry with barely a question about compensation; the auto bailout, however, was sunk on this issue alone.

    UAW President Ron Gettelfinger realized that the existence of the union was under attack, which is why he refused to give in to the Senate Republicans’ demands that the UAW make further concessions. I say “further” because the union has already conceded a lot. Its 2007 contract introduced a two-tier contract to pay new hires $15 an hour (instead of $28) with no defined pension plan and dramatic cuts to their health insurance. In addition, the UAW agreed that healthcare benefits for existing retirees would be transferred from the auto companies to an independent trust. With the transferring of the healthcare costs, the labor cost gap between the Big Three and the foreign transplants will be almost eliminated by the end of the current contracts.

    These concessions go some distance toward leveling the playing field (retiree costs are still a factor for the Big Three). But what the foreign car companies want is to level – which is to say, wipe out – the union. They currently discourage their workforce from organizing by paying wages comparable to the Big Three’s UAW contracts. In fact, Toyota’s per-hour wages are actually above UAW wages.

    However, an internal Toyota report, leaked to the Detroit Free Press last year, reveals that the company wants to slash $300 million out of its rising labor costs by 2011. The report indicated that Toyota no longer wants to “tie [itself] so closely to the U.S. auto industry.” Instead, the company intends to benchmark the prevailing manufacturing wage in the state in which a plant is located. The Free Press reported that in Kentucky, where the company is headquartered, this wage is $12.64 an hour, according to federal labor statistics, less than half Toyota’s $30-an-hour wage.

    If the companies, with the support of their senators, can wipe out or greatly weaken the UAW, they will be free to implement their plan.

    But their plan will not work. The Bush administration is likely to keep the Big Three alive long enough for President-elect Barack Obama to construct a real solution. Democrats and even most Republicans understand that a nation that has already lost 2 million jobs this year cannot afford to put at risk 3 million more.

    What the economy needs now is rising wages so the country can get on the path of wage-driven consumption growth. That means stronger unions. Indeed, I believe eventually it will mean the unionization of the entire U.S. auto industry.

    ——–

    Bruce Raynor is the general president of Unite Here, a union of 465,000 workers in the apparel, textile, laundry, food service, distribution, hotel and gaming industries.