Unions feud over DNC site
MOLLY BALL | Politico
11/18/10
Dismayed by the accusation that Cleveland is insufficiently unionized to host the 2012 Democratic convention, the city’s AFL-CIO is firing back with a defense of its union hotel facilities.
“Cleveland and the Cleveland metropolitan area boast a healthy number of union hotels,” the executive secretary of the region’s AFL-CIO federation, Harriet Applegate, wrote in a letter to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine this week.
The area’s 10 union hotels include six in downtown Cleveland and a seventh at the airport, the letter notes. The city’s convention center and sports arenas also are unionized.
Last month, the hotel workers union UNITE HERE had written to Kaine urging the DNC to rule out Cleveland and Charlotte, N.C., two of the four finalist cities to host the convention, because of their alleged lack of union facilities.
UNITE HERE urged the DNC to consider only Minneapolis and St. Louis, cities where the union has a significant presence.
While Charlotte has no union hotels at all, Cleveland has them — but they are organized by a rival union, Workers United, which split with UNITE HERE in 2009 after a nasty leadership battle.
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