Hospitality Union Leaving the AFL-CIO
A union representing almost half a million apparel and hospitality workers has decided to bolt the AFL-CIO and join a half-dozen other unions seeking to focus labor more on recruiting.
“It is time for the labor movement to make some changes,” Unite Here’s general president, Bruce Raynor, said Wednesday.
“After two years of internal debate, we have concluded it is the best course for the labor movement for us to join hands with six sister organizations and strike off in a direction of focusing more on organizing,” Raynor said.
He said workers’ living standards were eroding and they lacked adequate healthcare and retirement benefits.
Unite Here’s general executive board voted unanimously Tuesday to end its affiliation with the giant labor federation. The AFL-CIO includes more than 50 unions representing about 9 million workers.
Unite Here joins the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America in forming a dissident federation that calls itself the Change to Win Coalition.
The Laborers International Union of North America and the United Farm Workers are also part of the new federation, but have not left the AFL-CIO.
Unite Here leaders said the biggest change for the breakaway unions would be devoting most of their resources to organizing.
“The only way to find out if an alternative road works is to set out in that direction,” said John Wilhelm, Unite Here’s president for hospitality workers. “The only way to reverse the decline in living standards is for the labor movement to be bigger and stronger.”
The coalition covers about 6 million workers.
In all, departures from the AFL-CIO represent about $32 million of the AFL’s $120-million budget.
Unite Here has paid about $4 million a year to be a member of the AFL-CIO, Raynor said. Much of that will now be spent on organizing workers in some of the fastest-growing parts of the economy, he said.
AFL-CIO spokeswoman Lane Windham said the union’s leadership “made the wrong decision for their members and for America’s working people. The AFL-CIO was strongly supporting Unite Here’s plans to launch a major organizing initiative in the hotel industry.”
