Airbnb deal divides powerful unions, which assail each other on Twitter

Rosa Goldensohn

April 20, 2016

The Hotel Trades Council was enraged to learn that SEIU 32BJ, the building service workers' union, could cut a deal with the controversial home-rental company

After word of an impending deal between the Services Employees International Union and home-rental website Airbnb, city unions representing hotel and building-service workers clashed online Tuesday.

SEIU 32BJ president Héctor Figueroa and the Hotel Trades Council sparred on Twitter, with the hotel workers' union decrying 32BJ's "betrayal" and Figueroa calling for "solidarity."

The two unions worked together on the "Fight for 15" minimum-wage campaign and pushed for city zoning changes to require affordable housing. But news that 32BJ might work with Airbnb to unionize cleaners of its rental properties shook the previously solid relationship.

The hotel workers' union charges that Airbnb fosters illegal hotels, diverting business from legitimate hotels where its members work. 

"It doesn’t strengthen workers, and in fact undercuts the standards we’ve fought so hard to build for housekeepers in the hospitality industry," said Annemarie Strassel, a spokeswoman for UNITE HERE, another union representing hotel workers. Labor leaders and affordable-housing advocates also argue that Airbnb depletes the city's already-insufficient housing stock by brokering rentals to tourists.

But SEIU contends that workers in Airbnb rentals should be unionized in any event.

"Progressives want labor to organize Wal-Mart regardless of its business model. Why would it be different with Airbnb?" Figueroa asked on Twitter.

The national leadership of both unions are in talks on the issue, according to 32BJ spokeswoman Elaine Kim.

Airbnb wants its operations to create union jobs, a spokesman said.  The company has "been engaged in conversations with organizations and community leaders about how to best help working families find solutions to economic inequality, including creating specific ways we could leverage the Airbnb platform to help create quality union jobs that pay a livable wage," spokesman Christopher Nulty said.

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We do not approve a union poaching against another union. This phenomenon is ugly, deplorable and disgusting.