Fragmentation in Toronto's Hotel Sector
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1555 ... February 14, 2018
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Fragmentation in Toronto’s Hotel Sector
Steven Tufts
The intensity of the current conflict between UNITE HERE and its trusteeship of Local 75 and Unifor’s formation of a new local of hospitality workers (condemned by most of the labour movement as a raid) makes critical self-reflection and discussion especially difficult. In the essay below, Steven Tufts attempts to put this clash into perspective and offers ways forward that point to a unity beyond the current polarizing divisions in the sector. Tufts is a labour researcher with two decades of close association with Toronto area hotel workers, beginning with his PhD dissertation on HERE Local 75’s renewal beginning in the mid-1990s after the union emerged from an imposed international trusteeship. He has followed the union through its... merger -- and divorce -- with UNITE which formed UNITE HERE in the mid-2000s. He remains an active supporter of its’ programs, such as the Hospitality Workers’ Training Centre and campaigns such as Fairbnb.
Many labour activists in Toronto -- and indeed Canada -- are well aware of the conflict between UNITE HERE Local 75 and the newly formed Unifor Local 7575. We know many of the leaders and activists on both sides and the now open warfare is heart-wrenching. But analysis and positions need to be taken in terms of both the immediate issues and the less-discussed longer-term ones. As an insider/outsider who has followed hospitality workers for some time, I write this with the greatest respect for workers and unionists who are grappling with the challenges of anti-black racism, anti-democratic union practices, union competition, and rank-and-file mobilization that face the entire labour movement.
Over the last few weeks there have been condemnations of Unifor raiding UNITE HERE. There are further rhetorical pleas for a return to ‘unity’ and to redirect resources to ‘organizing the unorganized’. Indeed, for hotel workers -- largely immigrants, women, and people of colour -- raiding is an expensive distraction that divides workers and gives employers an advantage. What several of these commentaries fail to acknowledge is that in the current structure of organized labour, fragmentation is actually the norm and unity is the exception. Fragmented union representation in the hotel sector is a prime example of this reality and has been this way for some time.
