Jews and the Labor Movement: Historic Union Torn Apart in Messy Divorce

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.forward.com/articles/110380/

Posted by request.



By Nathaniel Popper
Published July 22, 2009, issue of July 31, 2009.

The offices of union boss Bruce Raynor were, until recently, a physical testament to the Jewish labor movement’s enduring power.

Raynor, president of the historically Jewish garment unions, worked from an executive suite in Manhattan’s garment district, in a storied building that had been purchased with the dues of countless seamstresses and furriers and milliners working on the Lower East Side. While the Jewish members have largely disappeared from the rank and file of the union, Raynor himself is the child of a Long Island Jewish home and the garment district building is littered with reminders of the history.

In late May, though, Raynor was forced to beat a hasty retreat to much more modest offices farther downtown, in a building with low ceilings and drab carpeting and with temporary signs taped onto the walls.

“The fact that we had to leave the headquarters — I didn’t like it,” Raynor told the Forward while sitting in his new office. The walls around him were bare, except for a poster with a picture of Sidney Hillman, the Lithuanian-Jewish émigré who rose up to lead the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.

Raynor’s move was precipitated by an increasingly hostile union battle that has left the fate and assets of America’s most storied Jewish union in question; it also has complicated the future of America’s labor movement as a whole.

Raynor’s garment union, which was known as UNITE, merged in 2004 with the national hotel union, which was known as HERE, to form Unite Here. Raynor took over as president of the joint union, but the merger unraveled, and both sides are now attempting to keep control of the joint assets, including the old headquarters of the garment union and the largest union bank, Amalgamated Bank, which was founded by the old garment unions. Currently, Raynor retains chairmanship of the bank, but he moved out of his office as the controversy intensified.

FULL story at link.

[nosmokes]

1. Thanks for posting!

Some fascinating history in there as well.

[Union Yes]

2. Big knr Union Bro! nt

[Omaha Steve]

3. Kick