Sadly, HERE organizing style just doesn’t work – no one has 5 – 10 years to build committees or to prove how committed they are. It’s crazy – even if it did work there’s no money to fund that any longer. The leadership of UNITE HERE (both sides) wasted millions of our dues dollars in places like Indianapolis and there’s nothing to show for it. Being fanatical and not practical about what works does nothing to build a worker’s movement or change the plight of working families.

The revolution won’t happen inside the staff of labor unions, for real change to happen members have to lead.

SEIU is not Any Stern, and it is not monolithic either. It still includes some of the most democratic and militant local unions in the nation and in many places it has achieved the highest standards of wages, benefits and shop-floor rights for workers in thier core industries (there are tens of thousands of SEIU janitors and nursing home workers who make double the national average wage for workers in thier occupation, with full paid health insurance and pension benefits, that would offer a different pesrspective on thier union if any of the commentators would actually bother to talk to an actual worker, rather than just preaching to everyone else about what they believe workers want and need).

Either way, the UNITE/HERE nightmare still isn’t about Stern or SEIU.

I have been active in the labor movement for the last two decades and unlike Wilhelm or Raynor, I actually came from the rank-and-file (and not as an Ivy-League educated “salt” either) so I dont think I need any lectures about who cares for workers and who doesn’t. In fact, I’m rather tired of hearing all of the highly educated white men pontificate about what “workers” want and what is best for “the workers”I have good friends on all sides in this dispute, as well as friends and family members that are members of all three of these unions. I don’t think anyones’ hands are totally clean here, but I also think the demonizing and personal attacks accomplish nothing and damage the good people and the good work that you can find in all of these unions. Sweeping generalisations and false accusations may be all you can manage when the facts are inconvenient, but they are not at all persuasive.

This is not a Wilhelm-led holy war for the sacred principle of “union democracy” (as much as the HERE PR machine is trying to make it seem that way)… it is a power struggle and a fight over dividing the assets of a failed merger that has already effectively been ended through secession.

Do you really believe that neither Andy Stern or Bruce Raynor “care about workers”? Really? You may disagree with them on many points of principle, politics or strategy (as I do) but to claim they “don’t care about workers” demonstrates your ignorance and partisanship. To argue that these unions “don’t know how to organize” is also a laughable claim

http://gallery.mac.com/lynfilm#100093/RaisingIndianapolis_WEB&bgcolor=black

Congratulations for hitting all the UNITE/SEIU talking points in one concise statement. Your union may not care about workers, and you may not know how to organize, but your PR work and press prowess are second to none!

Communications specialists of the world unite!

What I think this is really all about is that some on the HERE side just don’t want to see the UNITE members walk away with all of the assets they had brought into the merger. Fair is fair… the building, the bank and the money belonged to the members of UNITE who paid thier dues while working in the textile mills and garment shops to pool the reources that funded thier union’s operations to benefit those workers and thier families. HERE was bankrupt before the merger because of thier history of corruption and mismanagement (and like it or not, this is an uncontested fact and it was the primary motive for HERE wanting the merger in the first place). Now John Wilhelm thinks HERE should be able to keep what never belonged to him because 150,000 members have chosen to walk away? Is this what Wilhelm’s idea of democracy is? Tyrnany of the majority is not democracy, and attempting to pillage the legacy and treasury of generations of garment workers is an inexcusable act that only heightens the hypocrisy of those who claim this whole fight is about union “democracy”.

Its time to end this pointless and destructive feud. Sit at the table, sign the divorce settlement and get back to work building a labor movement that actually works for working people.