One Union's Record

UNITE HERE, a union of garment and hospitality employees whose leaders are dedicated to avoiding secret ballot elections, offers telling examples of inappropriate union activity that harms employers and employees.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that casino workers filed unfair labor practice charges after they were forced into the union through the card
check procedure:

'A lady ... told me that if I did not sign for the union that my wife who works at Caesars Palace will be fired,' one affidavit reads. 'That is why I signed.'

In another sworn statement, an MGM employee said that a union recruiter told people a vote would follow the card signings. A different employee reported being told that if MGM management discovered she was gay, she would be fired, and that the union was her only protection:

'Other employees were threatened with deportation,' [a plaintiff’s attorney] said. 'Some were followed. People who wore nonunion buttons had them ripped from their clothes. It was all done with the idea of forcing people to sign the union cards.'

In July 2006, the Placer County Superior Court ordered the union UNITE HERE to pay $17.3 million in compensatory damages to a group of Northern California doctors and hospitals. Earlier that month, a jury found UNITE HERE guilty of acting with “fraud, malice, and oppression” when it sent misleading and defamatory postcards attempting to scare expectant mothers away from a hospital facility. The hospital was using an outside commercial laundry service, which at the time was in a labor dispute with UNITE HERE. In April 2007, UNITE HERE reached a settlement with a Wisconsin hospital that had alleged “harassment and interference” with patients when the union was seeking to represent a third-party contractor.

In late August of 2006, U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell ordered UNITE to pay targeted employees of Cintas Corporation $2,500 each, plus attorneys’ fees and other costs. Union organizers had made uninvited, unwanted home visits after illegally obtaining employees’ addresses through motor vehicles records.

In April 2007, employees of a Los Angeles hotel issued a statement calling on UNITE HERE’s officials to stop harassing them. According to the Daily Breeze, the employees said:

As employees of the LAX Hilton, we are tired of being bullied by UNITE Here. In these last two years we have been the target of a campaign not for the betterment of employees or wages or benefits, but simply to increase the union’s membership.

Jen Jason, a former Unite-HERE organizer testified before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions on February 8, 2007. In her sworn testimony to Members of Congress, Jason said her definition and understanding of “worker’s rights and democracy in the workplace” was clearly at odds with that of union leadership:

I began my career with UNITE with a strong belief in worker’s rights and democracy in the workplace. During the course of my employment with the union, I began to understand the reality behind the rhetoric. I took in the ways that organizers were manipulating workers just to get a majority on ‘the cards’ and the various strategies that they employed. I began to appreciate that promises made by organizers at a worker’s house had little to do with how the union actually functions as a ‘service’ organization …

Frankly, it isn’t difficult to agitate someone in a short period of time, work them up to the point where they are feeling very upset, tell them that I have the solution, and that if they simply sign a card, the union will solve all of their problems.