John Sweeney

Solis Tells AFL-CIO: “I am proud and humbled to be your humble servant…”

by Ivan Osorio on September 15, 2009

in Economy, Labor, Politics as Usual, Regulation

The AFL-CIO, at its recent convention in Pittsburgh,  had much to celebrate, including the fact that a Labor Secretary showed up to pay tribute to her biggest supporters when she campaigned for Congress. Reports Investor’s Business Daily:

Late last Friday, the White House decided to slap a 35% import tariff on Chinese tires. In doing so, the administration sided with the United Steelworkers despite the risks of a trade war with China, the largest holder of Treasuries at a time of record U.S. deficits.

That’s only the most recent example of Washington’s union friendliness.

The auto industry bailout — though painful for all parties — largely preserved unions’ generous wages and benefits at the expense of creditors and taxpayers.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., sent the convention videotaped hellos with effusive praise. “I look forward to working with your leadership team in the future,” Pelosi said.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis echoed Pelosi in her speech Monday. She also called Sweeney “my good friend and colleague” and “our president.”

“I am proud and humbled to be your humble servant as labor secretary,” she told the convention. She said the department was adding 670 labor law investigators. [Emphasis added.]

Maybe those new investigators will look into abuses by union officials, as well, as employers, but such talk from a Cabinet secretary  and the Obama administration’s recent actions are not encouraging.

For more on the Obama administration’s and Congressional Democrats’ fulfillment of Big Labor’s wish list, see here.

UNITE-HERE Civil War Sets Up AFL-CIO vs. SEIU Confrontation

by Ivan Osorio on March 26, 2009

in Labor

Like the Cold War-era Third World civil wars in which the superpowers would fight each other by proxy, the increasingly bitter row within  UNITE-HERE appears to have blown up into a confrontation between the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which disaffiliated from the former in 2005, taking other unions with it to form a new labor federation, Change to Win.

UNITE-HERE, formed from a 2004 merger between the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees (UNITE) and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE), now seems like an unstable structure.

This week, the union’s textile industry segment led by Bruce Raynor (head of UNITE before the merger) voted to disaffiliate from UNITE-HERE, while th ehospitality industry segment led by John Wilhelm (head of HERE before the merger) voted to rejoin the AFL-CIO, which UNITE-HERE had left in order to join the new Change to Win labor federation, which was founded under the auspices of SEIU.

The new Raynor-led union has chosen to join SEIU. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this.

For more on SEIU, see here.