[fla-left] [labor] Disney employees struggle for a more militant union (fwd)

Michael Hoover hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us
Mon Jun 26 13:48:55 PDT 2000


forwarded by Michael Hoover


> An otherwise pretty good article marred by a little bit of misguided
> editorializing by the reporter in the second graf. Disney _is_ at fault,
> actually. Regardless of the so-called market forces, Disney has a moral
> obligation to at least pay a decent living wage to its employees, who
> produce its wealth. Don't forget that CEO Michael Eisner's $40 million a
> year salary is several thousand times greater than the annual pay of almost
> all Disney employees. I know Murray Cohen from when the Service Employees
> International Union was trying to organize workers at Universal Studios.
> --Ben Markeson, moderator
> ______________________________________________________
> Toward a more perfect union
>
> By Jeffrey C. Billman
> Published 6/21/00
>
> By and large, Disney service workers will tell you, the "magic" of the
> Kingdom is reserved for the guests. The workers, meanwhile, take it on the
> chin -- then are expected to smile and ask for more. Many work long hours
> in the hot sun and still have trouble amassing a living wage.
>
> Of course, Disney's not really at fault. For one thing, service-industry
> jobs don't pay a whole lot to begin with. In fact, Disney is considered a
> leader in the tourism industry, paying as well as if not better than its
> competitors.
>
> Still, when company reports boast profits in the $2 billion range and even
> 20-year veterans top out at $10.89 an hour, employees tend to become
> disgruntled. To date, however, they've been able to do very little about it.
>
> The reason: For the most part, Disney's service unions, which operate under
> the umbrella Service Trades Council (STC) union, are weak and ineffective.
> During the last contract negotiation in 1998, for example, STC members
> twice voted down Disney's contract offer --in which a slight raise in
> hourly pay was offset by increased health-insurance premiums --before
> Disney threatened to eliminate any pay raises altogether. In the end,
> Disney prevailed.
>
> In some places, such treatment would have led to an immediate strike. After
> all, in the tight job market that is Central Florida, the union should have
> been able to strong-arm Disney into giving its members damn near anything.
>
> Instead, it left some workers wondering whether they would be better off
> without a union at all. (An effort to organize a sick-out in protest
> failed, and 11 people were fired.)
>
> The problem, from the union's perspective, is simple. Florida is a
> right-to-work state, meaning no one can be forced to join a labor union. As
> a result, more than half of Disney 55,000 workers -- 63 percent -- don't,
> though they receive the same benefits as the union members, without having
> to pay the $6.80 a week dues. And without solidarity, a union is
> meaningless.
>
> On the flip side sits Harvey Totzke, the secretary-treasurer of Hotel
> Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 737 and president of the
> Service Trades Council. Since 1982, Totzke undeniably has been the most
> important union figure in Mouse land, commanding a six-figure salary that
> far exceeds his fellow union leaders.
>
> In recent years, however, he's also become the focal point of very pointed
> and sometimes vicious criticism. His opponents say he's become complacent
> and self-serving; they say he's taking too much money and producing too few
> results.
>
> And for the first time in 18 years, he now has a challenge to his
> leadership. On June 30, when ballots are counted to fill the 11 union
> positions -- including Totzke's -- that are being contested, a potentially
> dramatic shift could result.
>
> Leading the charge is Murray Cohen, a room-service server in the Wilderness
> Lodge who in 1998 transferred into HERE from another STC union. "[HERE was]
> less than active," he says. "In a year and a half, I watched them do things
> that sicken me."
>
> So he and another dissatisfied HERE member, Joe Suarez, began circulating
> literature critical of Totzke's administration and advocating change,
> effectively galvanizing the dissension. It came to a head in late January,
> when the union voted to amend its bylaws, changing candidate qualifications
> and basically preventing Cohen and Suarez from running for the union's
> executive board.
>
> Cohen and Suarez complained to the U.S. Department of Labor, which found
> the amendment to be unreasonable and ordered new elections. Moreover, the
> department is supervising the rerun elections, from the mail-out of ballots
> to the vote counting itself.
>
> The new elections brought dissenters out of the woodwork: Shelley Patton, a
> server in Cinderella's Castle, is now running for Totzke's position as
> secretary-treasurer, a position that went uncontested in the March
> election. With Patton and Cohen at the head, an entire slate of challengers
> emerged, threatening to upset a consistent power base less than a year
> before the union enters into its next contract negotiation with Disney.
>
> The upstarts have a long list of complaints, ranging from misuse of funds
> and excessive salaries to nepotism. But at the heart is the union's
> perceived weakness at the bargaining table.
>
> "Harvey became very complacent," Patton says. "There's no real pressure to
> get anything done." In the last few bargaining sessions, she says, Totzke
> and union negotiators have given away things like the free health
> insurance, walk times (in which employees are paid for their sometimes
> 20-minute walk from the parking lot to the job) and an increased percentage
> of banquet gratuities.
>
> "They want a completely adversarial approach," says Totzke. But if you are
> completely adversarial, he adds, the company won't work with you.
>
> He views the complaints as the bickerings of disgruntled workers who see
> problems with their personal situations as grounds for upsetting the whole
> system. Patton, for instance, is upset that Disney eliminated bussers from
> her restaurant, Totzke says; Suarez and Cohen's beef is that the union
> stopped pursuing their individual grievances.
>
> But there are other complaints, such as Totzke's $13,500 raise last year.
> "Harvey received a wage increase voted on by [union] members," says Margie
> Engles, Local 737's vice president. "Murray Cohen was at that meeting and
> didn't oppose the wage increase." She and Totzke answer criticism that
> Totzke wasted union money on golf outings by saying those were charity
> events; just because a fund-raiser is a golf tourney, Totzke says, is no
> reason for the union not to donate.
>
> As for nepotism, Totzke says it's not unusual for unions to have family
> members on the payroll. Totzke's wife and mother both work for Local 737;
> up until last year, his mother was its president. New president Harry
> Edminston's wife works with a union counseling service and does secretarial
> work.
>
> The divisiveness within the union that Cohen traces to Totzke's
> administration didn't exist until Cohen showed up, Totzke says. Either way,
> the result is a nasty campaign, an example of which is an attack flier that
> depicts three mug shots of Totzke (arrested twice for battery and once for
> violating probation) and says, "We don't need his kind of 'experience' in
> our Union!" Totzke declined comment about the arrests, saying he didn't
> want personal information dispersed around Central Florida. But he says he
> would be more than happy to discuss it with union members.
>
> The infighting could be moot regardless of the outcome should the union's
> clout stay the same. Both sides stress the need to build membership --
> Local 737 mailed out 4,388 ballots for the March 8 election -- but there's
> uncertainty about how to do so. "We've done everything we can," says Harry
> Edminston, Local 737's president and a Totzke supporter. "I never
> understood why people don't get involved -- they just don't."
>
> Cohen says he knows why: Union members feel disenfranchised by the current
> administration. During his campaign, he says, many have asked him how to
> get out of the union. Some, he adds, don't even know which union they're in
> or who their representatives are.
>
> "The key to this whole thing," he says, "[is that] between now and April
> [2001, when the union renegotiates its contract], we need to get more
> enrollment." Without a majority, there will never be any collective
> bargaining, and certainly never enough clout to strike. Should members see
> a more active, open leadership, he says, they will get more involved and
> make the union more viable. And if they're successful, Cohen says, he wants
> to organize the entire tourist corridor, perhaps making this election the
> catalyst for a permanent change for service industry workers.
>
> Or, says Totzke, it could shut down the now-open lines of communication
> with Disney for good.



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