Bay Area Union Boss Losing Grip On Members As Boycott, Illegal Use of Funds Takes Toll

The San Francisco Sentinel is carrying a story about the turmoil within San Francisco’s hotel union UNITE-HERE.

This is year is off to a rocky start for Local 2 Unite Here and its leader Mike Casey. First, the union was forced by the federal government to replace money it had illegally taken from employee trust funds after it was cited for Unfair Labor Practices. Now other hotels are considering filing Unfair Labor Practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board on the same money transfer issue.

But the even bigger story is that Mike Casey may be losing his grip on his members. This week hotel employees who heard about the misuse of funds by Casey and Local 2 leaders started wearing buttons that said “Mike Casey’s Union NO!!! Union Yes.”

Local 2 union leaders demanded that members remove the anti-Casey buttons. Word in the hallways of some of the largest hotels in San Francisco is that employees are tired of Casey’s demonstrations and boycotts and want a settlement with hotel management.

Hotel union membership has dropped from 13,000 to 9,000, a 30 percent drop over the past three years. While the economy played a big role in job losses, many Local 2 members hold Casey’s boycott and labor actions responsible for their own economic hardship and loss of jobs.

Last week, as reported by The Examiner, UNITE-HERE agreed to stop using money meant for workers’ benefits to fund its lengthy boycott against San Francisco’s hotels.

Hotel workers enmeshed in a longstanding boycott campaign against several San Francisco hotel companies agreed to stop diverting money from a union benefit fund to a separate legal defense fund, a hotel spokesman said Tuesday.

After the National Labor Relations Board brought a legal case against Unite Here Local 2, which represents 12,000 hotel employees in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, the union agreed to reverse its actions and restore the monies to the proper funds with interest, hotel spokesman Pete Hillan said in a written statement.

In May, the Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency complained about the practice to the NLRB, and the agency subsequently intervened, Hillan said. Before the union redirected the funds, the money had been going to fund child care and elder care.

It is interesting that, only now, members are beginning to wake up to the shenanigans of their union boss.

Photo credit: Brooke Anderson