Constitution Check: Do labor unions have a new answer to right-to-work laws?

by Lyle Denniston

April 26, 2016

Lyle Denniston, the National Constitution Center’s constitutional literacy adviser, looks at the debate over “right-to-work” laws and a potentially important case in Wisconsin.

THE STATEMENTS AT ISSUE:

“I’ve asked Judge Foust to stay his order to ensure that the [Wisconsin] right-to-work law remains in effect on appeal.  Given that 25 other states have right-to-work laws and none of those have been declared unconstitutional, I am confident Wisconsin’s law will be upheld.  Therefore, it is imperative that Wisconsin’s right-to-work law remain in effect while on appeal.”

 – Excerpt from a public statement by Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel on April 18, announcing the state’s effort to block a state judge’s ruling ten days earlier against the right-to-work law, based on the Wisconsin state constitution.

“We are disappointed our motion for stay in the right-to-work case was denied by Dane County Circuit Court and plan to seek a stay in the court of appeals, where we feel confident this law will be upheld.”

 – Statement by Attorney General Schimel on April 25, after the state judge refused to put the decision on hold during the state’s appeal.

WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTION, AND…

For decades, labor unions in America have chafed at what they call the “free rider” problem, but that very problem has been more aggravating to them with the spreading success of “right-to-work” laws.  Lately, though, their lawyers have fashioned what is potentially an effective answer to that problem: the U.S. Constitution.

The “free rider” issue, as described by labor unions, grows out of the fact that federal law requires them to provide bargaining and grievance-resolving services to all of the workers in the bargaining unit that the union has been chosen to represent, but when some employees represented by that union choose not to join, they get those services for free, when – in the unions’ view — they ought to be helping finance at least a fair share of those costs.

The problem, unions complain, deepens when a state enacts a “right-to-work” law, because those laws bar unions from charging non-members any dues or fees for those services.

The right-to-work movement keeps spreading: in February, West Virginia became the 26th state to adopt such a measure; it has not yet gone into effect.  Unions in the state failed in an effort to block its passage.

Lawyers for unions have tried out the constitutional answer to their “free-rider” grievance in a federal court case involving an Indiana right-to-work law, but ultimately failed on a split 5-to-5 vote to get a full hearing on the idea in that appeals court.  Frustrated, the unions gave up without taking that test case on to the Supreme Court.  (There were some procedural side-issues in the case that might have kept it from being an ideal test case to take to the Justices.)

Now, the same maneuver – but based on a state constitution, not the federal document – is having some success in state court in Wisconsin. That is a first; a similar state constitutional challenge failed in Indiana state courts when that state’s law drew parallel challenges in the state as well as federal courts. It is clear that the issue will not go away, so it almost certainly will be back in the federal courts, too.

The constitutional idea goes like this: When unions are required by law to provide their services to everyone on a given company’s payroll, whether members of the union or not, their property is being taken for a public purpose and the failure of non-members to pay for a share of those services amounts to an unconstitutional seizure (technically, a “taking”) of their property under either the federal or a state constitution.

The federal Constitution provides, in the Fifth Amendment, that “no person” may have their “private property…taken for public use without just compensation.”  While many states have similar clauses in their own constitutions, that is actually not necessary for the protection of private property within those states: The Fifth Amendment “takings clause” has been absorbed into the Fourteenth Amendment through the analytical doctrine of “incorporation,” thus requiring states to apply that protection within their own borders.  (That “incorporation” of the “takings clause” came as long ago as 1897, in a Supreme Court decision: Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. Chicago.)

Wisconsin, of course, is now an attractive venue for labor unions to mount a constitutional challenge to that state’s right-to-work law.   Under the leadership of the state’s Republican governor, Scott Walker, Wisconsin has pursued several efforts to cut down on the power and influence of labor unions.   A right-to-work law, so-called “Act 1,” was enacted last year as part of that effort.

It is a typical right-to-work statute: it bars labor unions from assessing any dues, fees or charges of any kind from non-union members.  Thus, all of the costs of a union’s collective bargaining efforts, of carrying out a labor contract, and running a grievance process, are covered  solely by the dues paid by union members.

The day after Governor Walker signed that measure, two labor unions, Wisconsin branches of the Machinists Union and the Steelworkers Union, along with the state version of the AFL-CIO, sued in state court to challenge the law.  Act 1, the lawsuit argued, transfers the union’s property – its services – to non-members, and the union gets nothing in return.

On April 8, state Circuit Court Judge C. William Foust of Madison ruled, striking down Act 1 under the state constitution.  State officials promptly planned an appeal, and are now in the process of trying to get Judge Foust’s ruling delayed while that appeal goes forward.  Because the case turns solely on state, not federal, law, it will be resolved only in state courts.

But the reasoning Judge Foust used, paralleling that of five judges on the federal Seventh Circuit Court in the Indiana case, already has gained a prominence beyond the borders of Wisconsin.  And, even if the state’s supreme court ultimately were to uphold Act 1 against the state constitutional challenge, the case of Machinists Union v. Wisconsin already is figuring prominently in the ongoing debate over trade unionism in America.

After a series of setbacks across the nation, generally diminishing the social and political influence of unions, their leaders and members across the nation are suddenly finding reason to be pleased with Wisconsin.

Detroit Free Press, News unions approve labor contracts

Detroit Free Press staff 8:43 p.m. EDT April 24, 2016

Unionized workers at the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News approved three-year contracts today that include annual wage increases and a signing bonus.

In voting that concluded Sunday, members of the Newspaper Guild of Detroit Local 34022 voted overwhelmingly to ratify tentative agreements reached earlier this month, according to a news release from the Guild.

"Bargaining was long and difficult, but our negotiating teams believe we crafted the best deal we could for our members in a difficult environment for newspapers," said John Gallagher, a business reporter for the Free Press and Detroit Guild president, in a statement.

The Guild represents reporters, photographers, copy editors, page designers, editorial assistants, and other newsroom workers.

The contracts for both newsrooms include  a $700 signing bonus, plus raises of 1.5% in each of the first two years and 1% in the third year. Workers also retain their current health care plan without additional co-payments or premium increases.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day also will be added as a paid holiday for workers at the Free Press.

The contract allows the Free Press after 18 months to move copy editing and design jobs into centralized hubs operated by its parent company Gannett.

Displaced workers would be eligible for extended severance pay and health insurance.

The contract doesn't impact design and copy editing at the Detroit News, which is owned separately by Digital First Media, but shares business operations with the Free Press under a joint operating agreement.

2 more Butler County unions agree to merit component

By Denise G. Callahan

Staff Writer

April 24, 2016

BUTLER COUNTY — Over the past two years Butler County has negotiated some component of performance pay into 10 of 14 union contracts, a goal the commissioners have sought for years.

The Water and Sewer and Maintenance departments are the latest unions to agree to merit pay. The 73 utility workers will receive an across-the-board 2 percent raise each year of the three-year deal and there is a 0.5 percent pool of money for merit pay. The merit raises will range from 0.25 to 1.25 percent.

There are only three maintenance union workers who will get a 50-cent per hour raise and 1 percent to 3 percent performance raise based on the county’s new performance evaluation. The merit money will be drawn from a 2 percent pool equal to the total annual base pay of the union workers.

Employees under the commissioners’ direct control only get performance pay. All of the unions who agreed to some form of performance reward also have an across-the-board component in their wage packages. Human Resources Director Jim Davis, who negotiated contracts said the water and sewer workers, said the “across-the-board” raises helped convince the unions to buy merit pay and to forego their step increases. They were the last union under the commissioners’ umbrella to still have step increases in their contract.

“That was part of the negotiating,” Davis said. “Losing steps was a big thing for them, giving ‘across the board’ is a big thing for us.”

When the union workers at the care facility ratified their new deal in January, their union chief Tena Swann, said she doesn’t exactly trust the performance-based system, but said since that was the only avenue for people to get raises, they agreed.

“It wasn’t an easy thing, period,” she said. “Would you like your employer evaluating you and the person next to you trying to evaluate them the same. I don’t know that I really am convinced, but after a certain point you’re just like, hmm, whatever. It’s not the only component. That’s part of the raise yes, but that’s not all of it, and that’s what I think made the difference.”

Davis said the maintenance agreement was a little unusual in that they took a 50 cent raise rather than a percentage.

“These things are very tailored to the individual units,” he said. “These are lower paid employees, we did the bump upfront for the three-year contract instead of doing a piece of it in year one, a piece of it in year two and a piece of it year three.”

When the economy tanked nearly all of the unions agreed to lump sum bonuses rather than percentage increases to their base pay. Bob Leventry, water and sewer director, said his employee’s steps have been suspended since 2009.

“There was some financial pressure on the county that caused us to request the unions to suspend the steps,” he said.

The first union to agree to some form of performance pay was the union in Court Clerk Mary Swain’s office in January 2015. They are currently negotiating a new deal.

The social workers in Children Services, after a two-year, extremely tough negotiation and a three-week strike, acquiesced. The deal, forged last Spring includes a two percent increase to the minimum and maximum salaries on their pay ranges, and the social workers received one- to three-percent pay hikes based on their performance. A two percent pool of money was available for raises. The salary ranges get another 2 percent boost this year and workers will again be eligible for merit pay. They will be negotiating a new contract next year.

Earlier this year the building inspectors in the Development Department — there are five — and nursing assistants, dietary, housekeeping and maintenance workers at the Care Facility — there are 80 — agreed to a two-percent, across-the-board increase for each of three years and a half percent performance component.

While the commissioners take the stance that the ten unions who have recently negotiated new deals have all consented to performance pay, the five sheriff’s unions disagree.

The contract for deputies and their supervisors includes a half percent increase if the employee completes four extra training assignments, participates in the annual physical fitness program and joins the county’s wellness program.

When the contract was ratified in January Union Chief Sgt. Jeff Gebhart said he doesn’t view the half percent incentive as performance pay because it is voluntary and it doesn’t effect base pay.

“I think we satisfied the commissioners a little bit,” he said. “We’re doing something other than just to say give us the money. We’re doing more than that. It’s a voluntary participation and we feel the cost of living raises were fair.”

Two unions, JFS and Child Support Enforcement will start negotiations later this year. The only union that has ratified with the commissioners that didn’t haggle over merit pay was in County Engineer Greg Wilkens’ office. He said he knows the commissioners want a pay-for-performance program countywide, but he didn’t feel it was necessary.

“The circumstances were such that I didn’t feel we needed it,” Wilkens said. “Our operation is running as smooth as it ever has. It didn’t come up in the contract and when things are moving smoothly why disrupt it.”

Commissioner Don Dixon said he is very pleased with the progress the county has made. There was a time not too long ago when double digit raises where doled out and they had over 100 job classifications — now they are down to 13 — because someone needed to justify a raise.

“It’s a huge step forward for the county and the county taxpayers,” he said. “I think it shows the quality of our employees and their reasonableness, when we’re discussing how to make a long term plan that keeps taxes in line and salaries fair.”

Uniting in Pittsburgh: Pitt’s faculty and student unions past and present

Emily Brindley / Staff Writer 

4/25/2016

Twenty-five years ago, Pitt’s faculty tried — and failed — to form a union after hitting problems with the administration and a lack of agreement among faculty.

Now, the faculty are trying again, calling for higher wages and job security through a union. This time, organizers say they have the cooperation and inclusiveness —as well as the support of the city — to make the effort successful.

Academic faculty city-wide have been pushing for  unions, making it a prime atmosphere for Pitt’s campaign, according to Maria Somma, organizing director for the International Union at United Steelworkers.

USW, a Pittsburgh-based local and international union organizer, has one successful campaign under its belt at Point Park University and is working to facilitate faculty union campaigns at several other nearby universities, including Robert Morris, Chatham and Pitt.

Somma said these efforts, as well as the increasing trend toward corporatization of education, create an ideal atmosphere for a successful union campaign at Pitt.

“You’ve got more and more corporatization and more and more people in the upper echelons looking at universities not as education … but as a business model,” Somma said. “I think it’s going to work because people are committed to this, to change.”

In January, Pitt faculty and graduate student workers officially announced their union campaigns. USW is facilitating both campaigns with legal and financial support as well as physical materials, such as shirts and buttons. Somma said there are an estimated 5,000 faculty members and an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 graduate student employees at Pitt who could potentially join their respective unions.

Peter Campbell, an assistant professor of English at Pit and an organizer of the faculty union campaign, said attendance at the campaign’s monthly coffee and happy hours show an increase in interest.

“The academic labor movement has real momentum in the city [of Pittsburgh] right now,” Campbell said.

Though the faculty and the graduate student employee campaigns communicate and collaborate, they remain separate efforts with distinct goals. Campbell said the faculty union efforts are based on a desire for increased job security and openness about the process of promoting and retaining faculty members, so faculty do not have to worry about sudden or unexpected termination.

The graduate student employee union will focus on a higher, livable wage, equal access to health care and the enforcement of contracts, as Hillary Lazar, fourth-year sociology graduate student and an organizer of the graduate student employee union effort, said, many graduate student employees work well beyond their contracted hours.

Campbell couldn’t provide an exact number of faculty members supportive of the union efforts, but said the campaign has talked with “hundreds” of faculty about the union. Lazar said the focus of the graduate student worker campaign is currently on taking the first step and building interest in the union. According to Lazar, the graduate student employee campaign has contacts in more than 20 different departments, with active participation from many of those departments.

Somma, Campbell and Lazar said there is no current timeline for the efforts to send out cards or hold a vote.

Former Vice Chancellor of Communications for Pitt, Ken Service, told The Pitt News in February that Pitt’s community has made “great strides” in communication between administration and faculty. Current Vice Chancellor of Communications Susan Rogers declined to update this statement.

“We remain confident that the best way to continue to advance our mission is for the entire University community to continue to work together in this cooperative and respectful manner,” Service said in an email in February.

In the Past

Pitt faculty attempted to create a union several times in the 1970s and ’90s, and though there were several union votes, none of the efforts earned the necessary majority vote to form a union.

Phil Wion, one of the lead organizers of the former union campaigns at Pitt, said the main reason previous efforts failed was a lack of solidarity among the full rank of faculty. A successful union effort, he said, must create a sense of common cause.

Wion, a Pitt professor emeritus of English, said faculty held the first union vote on Pitt’s campus in 1976 under the American Federation of Teachers, a faculty union organizer similar to USW.

Wion said the AFT did not win the union vote in part because some faculty believed the union should be united under the American Association of University Professors, another academic union organizer, for which Wion currently serves as the secretary and treasurer.

The AFT focused heavily on economic issues and the labor movement, causing many faculty members to vote for either the AAUP or for no organizing agent at all, according to Wion.

Wion and the other campaign organizers then began a lengthy process to merge the AFT and AAUP, which resulted in the formation of the United Faculty of the University of Pittsburgh in 1982. Following two years of campaigning, the UF filed for a union vote in 1984.

Around the same time, Pitt administration challenged the election to the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board based on the 1980 Yeshiva decision. The Yeshiva University decision ruled that full-time faculty fell under the position of managers at private universities, and therefore were not eligible to unionize. Pitt was the first public university to uphold the Yeshiva decision, according to Wion.

Despite the Yeshiva decision, the union campaign held a vote for part-time faculty in 1987. The vote succeeded but the union would exclude full-time faculty, so the campaign did not proceed.

According to Wion, in 1990 the Board then overturned the decision to make full-time faculty ineligible.

“In November 1990, the full board reversed the hearing examiner’s ruling and said that full-time faculty were not managers under Pennsylvania law and therefore were eligible to unionize,” Wion said. “The full unit was put back together.”

The UF then held another union vote in early 1991, but lost in part due to a lack of solidarity among the higher- and lower-level faculty. Wion said a number of the respected and financially stable faculty voted against the union, which would have benefited the lower-level faculty by giving them increased job security and influence.

“There were various arguments, one was that [a union] was not needed, that everything was relatively fine. But it was also partly haves against have-nots,” Wion said. “Those who were relatively well-paid and comfortable and felt that their voices were being heard, often were not so sure that they would retain their advantages if [other] faculty were part of this broad bargaining unit.”

Why it’s different now

For a successful union effort, Wion said there must be common interest in the campaign among not only adjunct and part-time faculty, but among well-paid and already-tenured faculty members as well.

“The difficulty in creating a sense of community interest, that was real and that contributed I think to the outcome [of previous union efforts],” Wion said. “It may be that it’ll be easier this time around to create that sense of common cause.”

To increase solidarity among all faculty, the current union campaign is focused on incorporating faculty of all ranks and from all campuses, according to Campbell.

“Our major interest is just to create a union so that faculty of all ranks at the University of Pittsburgh can work together and speak with one voice,” Campbell said. “It’s really important to emphasize that the University of Pittsburgh [union] would be all faculty of all rank and all campuses.”

Lazar said working conditions have also changed, affecting faculty members and graduate student employees of all ranks. Universities are increasingly focusing on business models instead of education models, resulting in dissatisfaction among University workers, according to Lazar.

“The conditions are different now,” Lazar said. “There’s a far greater degree of dissatisfaction and calling into question this corporatization across industries, but particularly within the academy.”

According to Campbell, the push to secure university faculty jobs is part of the nationwide backlash against insecure working conditions.

“In Pittsburgh, as in everywhere else in the U.S., there’s an increasing trend toward contingency in employment,” Campbell said. “This is a really important time for faculty to come together.”

Kai Pang, a Pitt senior philosophy and economics major and an intern at USW, said he sees commitment to the current union effort not only at the level of faculty and graduate students, but at the undergraduate level as well.

Though undergraduate students are not directly involved in either of the union campaigns, Pang said undergraduate support can assure the faculty that the students stand behind them and “have their back,” allowing faculty to pursue the union with the knowledge that the students will support them should they receive any backlash.

“One of the biggest reasons why I believe that the organizing efforts are going to work is because of the solidarity we’ve been building between the students, graduate employees and faculty members,” Pang said. “It’s important we stand in solidarity.”

Supporting the union efforts benefits the students as well because students’ quality of education is impacted by the stability — or instability — of their instructors, according to Lazar.

“That same process, that corporatization [of universities], is affecting undergraduate students as well,” Lazar said. “We do have the collective power of these tandem campaigns, both the faculty and the graduate student workers, but we also have the support of the undergraduates.”

Though the union efforts have not yet left the organizing stage, Campbell and Lazar said they hope the unions will give both the faculty and graduate student employees the ability to bargain with the University on equal footing.

“At this stage, what we’re trying to do is just get a seat at the table,” Lazar said. “By calling for a union, we’re just saying that we want to have access to the voice that’s necessary to be in dialogue with the administration.”

Labor Unions and Al Sharpton: An Enduring Partner ship

By Carl Horowitz 

04/22/2016 

With few exceptions, unions are powerful engines of egalitarian policy and its most potent political vehicle, the Democratic Party.  As the party platform now heavily overlaps with that of demagogic black identity politicians like Al Sharpton, labor leaders have become prominent supporters of Sharpton and his New York-based nonprofit, National Action Network (NAN).  The bond was very much in evidence at Manhattan’s Sheraton Times Square Hotel last Friday afternoon at a panel, “The State of American Labor Unions Today,” one of nearly 30 panels convened during the NAN annual convention held April 13-16.  Despite a couple of no-shows, the speakers satisfied the mostly black crowd, calling for more union organizing, more government programs and more activism to counter the "racist" Right.

Labor and civil rights activists long have marched hand in hand, literally as well as figuratively.  Unions provided the main ammunition for civil rights federal legislation of a half-century or more ago.  Most Americans may not be aware of it, but the August 28, 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his defining “I Have a Dream” speech, was as much a rally for trade unionism as for civil rights.  King was the marquee speaker of the event, formally known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, but it was labor officials who laid the groundwork.  The prime movers of that event were:  Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers; A. Philip Randolph, founder-president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a vice president of the AFL-CIO; and Bayard Rustin, head of the AFL-CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute.  Martin Luther King’s fateful visits to Memphis in 1968 were prompted by requests for support from local black ministers for an organizing drive by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Workers (AFSCME) of city sanitation workers.  And decades later, as I explained in a Special Report for National Legal and Policy Center, various unions were establishing close links with self-styled "anti-racist" revolutionaries in opposing American military involvement in the Middle East.  

Al Sharpton knows all this.  That’s why one of the panels of the National Action Network four-day extravaganza last week consisted of highly partisan union officials and allies.  He also knows that blacks constitute a comparatively large share of the unionized work force.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 13.6 percent of all U.S. black workers in 2015 belonged to a labor union.  The respective percentages for whites, Asians and Hispanics were 10.8 percent, 9.8 percent and 9.4 percent.  Among New York City public-sector unions, especially local affiliates of AFSCME and the AFSCME District Council 37 Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the percentages for blacks appear to be far higher.  Vocal support was in evidence among the audience.

The principal speaker on the labor issues panel was J. David Cox, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees.  Cox, whose Washington, D.C.-based union represents roughly 675,000 federal and District of Columbia government workers, expressed the belief that most social problems in this country could be solved with large increases in union membership. Unions, he argued, are the primary engine of social progress.  Moreover, they stand out as true allies of racial minorities and women.  Cox, a native of North Carolina, stringently denounced the recent challenge by Rebecca Friedrichs and her co-plaintiff teachers to the longstanding public-sector union practice of forcing nonmembers to pay partial dues or “agency fees.”  Late in March, the U.S. Supreme Court, deadlocked at 4-4, declined to issue a ruling in that California case, effectively upholding a dismissal by a federal appeals court.

Others spoke, too, and with the same kind of urgency.  Jill Furillo, executive director of the New York State Nurses Association, spoke of her organization’s aggressive campaign to prevent hospital closings, singling out National Action Network for praise in siding with health care workers.  She declared:  “We must be advocates for communities.”  Brianne Gorod, chief counsel for the hard-Left Washignton, D.C.-based nonprofit legal group, Constitutional Accountability Center, echoed basic union positions on economics.  “It’s time to give America a raise,” she said.  "People need a raise, whether or not they belong to a union."  Gorod, like Cox, also expressed relief over the Supreme Court non-ruling in Friedrichs and anger over the fact that the plaintiffs even were given legal standing.  Henry Garrido, executive director of AFSCME District Council 37, was even more aggressive.  “There is an open war on labor in this country,” he said.  Garrido denounced the recent passage by the State of West Virginia of a Right to Work law that will protect private-sector workers in that state from mandatory dues contributions.  The Right to Work idea, he added, originated decades ago with a known “white racist” (which, even if true, is utterly irrelevant to the Right to Work principle itself).  He also skewered the Wisconsin public-sector reform law of 2011 as a disaster, claiming it has led to drastic cuts in wages and benefits and a doubling of fatal workplace accidents.  Shane Harris, a black San Diego pastor and president of the National Action Network chapter in that city, offered loud (if not necessarily persuasive) commentary.  He argued that unions should be seen as human rights organizations, not simply labor organizations.  Unions, Harris argued, are a reflection of a larger struggle for justice in every aspect of life; thus, all of us have a moral imperative to support them.

The panel might have been even more heated had a pair of listed invitees shown up:  Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and George Gresham, president of Service Employees Local 1199, which represents about 300,000 active and retired health care workers in New York City and elsewhere.  These are two of the most powerful union leaders in the country, not just in New York City.  The AFT, as much as any labor organization could, supported Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign of 2008.  And it is working overtime to get her elected this time around.  SEIU Local 1199 provided crucial help to the Obama White House in securing passage of the Affordable Care Act of 2010.  Al Sharpton knows who his political friends are. 

The interests of unions and National Action Network heavily intersect.  That’s why the AFGE, AFSCME, AFT, SEIU and New York State Nurses Association each helped bankroll the recently-concluded NAN convention.  And, no coincidence, that’s why NAN set up a labor issues panel for top representatives of these very organizations.  Unions, especially public-sector unions, are moving ever further leftward, especially on racial issues.  That’s the way the Reverend Al likes it.  Thanks to union support, Sharpton and his inner circle are now more equipped than ever to launch campaigns against chosen “racist” targets.  National Action Network and its union allies might wind up better off, but our nation as a whole surely won’t.

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.

The one group unions don’t want getting a minimum wage in California? Union workers

Corinne Purtill

4/19/2016

When California governor Jerry Brown signed the state’s new $15 per hour minimum wage earlier this month, some of the loudest cheers came from labor unions, longtime champions of a higher minimum wage.

But as it turns out, many of those same unions have been quietly—and often successfully—lobbying cities to let employers who hire union workers pay them less than the mandated minimum.

Unions say it gives them the flexibility to negotiate packages for their workers that supplant wages with health insurance and other benefits.

Critics say that it’s a shrewd move by unions to drive up membership dues and ensure that their workers are the cheapest in town. The exemption gives cost-conscious employers little choice but to hire union, and workers who want jobs little choice but to join their local.

“It’s an organizing tool,” said Ruben Gonzalez, senior advisor at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “We’ve been completely opposed.”

Representatives from Unite Here, which covers hotel and garment industry workers, the AFL-CIO, and the service industry union SEIU did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

California’s new law mandates $15 per hour for all workers by 2022. Many cities had already adopted that rate locally. At the same time unions were lobbying cities to raise their wages, they were also making sure that the laws were written to exclude union workers from guaranteed higher pay.

Unions have secured such exemptions in at least 12 California cities including: Berkeley, Oakland, Palo Alto, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Monica. Most of those cities are in northern California’s Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area, which have some of the state’s highest living costs.

The Los Angeles City Council will consider a similar exemption on Tuesday, April 19. An effort to include it in Los Angeles’s $15 per hour law, which passed last year, was defeated.

The exemption has proved controversial within organized labor, with unions divided on whether it’s a good move for employees and public relations.

“I just think unions should not be in the business of carving out lower wage standards for ourselves,” SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West President Dave Regan told the LA Times. “We don’t help ourselves with anybody—with our members or with the public—by defending the indefensible.”