How Unite Here Plans to Double Organizing Spending and Save Democracy
An interview with Unite Here's new president, Gwen Mills.
This week, the 275,000-member hospitality workers union Unite Here formally elected Gwen Mills as its first female president. A longtime union activist who has helped run the union’s political program for many years, Mills is a savvy thinker who wants to do what she can to lean into the moment of opportunity that the labor movement finds itself in.
Unite Here is a mid-sized union that punches above its weight. Its door-knocking program is unrivaled, and has been vital to Democratic swing state wins in recent elections. And its formula for building political power for low-wage workers through rigorous, systematic labor organizing is a model for all unions. In my book, I wrote two chapters about Unite Here: One chapter about the Culinary Union in Las Vegas (Unite Here Local 226), which is perhaps the most fully realized example in the country of building working class power by organizing a city’s hospitality industry; and one chapter about Unite Here’s work in New Orleans and Miami, exploring the question of whether the machine that has been built in Vegas can be replicated in other cities with strong tourist economies.
I spoke to Mills this week about her plans for amping up organizing, the 2024 elections, and how to save democracy.
How Things Work: What are your priorities as the new Unite Here president? What’s your agenda?
Gwen Mills: Well, there’s a longer term and a shorter term agenda. Overall: just growing the union. The labor movement is thriving. There’s all this energy out there, in this labor moment. But really moving the needle on union density is gonna take diligence, focus—which we’ve been having, but we need to take it to the next level. We’re gonna double Unite Here’s annual investment in organizing, reaching out to non-union workers in our industries. So that’s the top priority.
What’s the dollar amount of the new organizing investment?
Mills: We’ll end up with $20 million a year. This year, we have two major things that we’re in the middle of. One is the ongoing hotel contract cycle. Last year, Chicago and LA had their hotel contract campaigns. LA is still ongoing, but largely resolved, and we set a standard. We have 20 unions. So with the exception of New York, which is next year, all the other major metropolitan cities in the US and Canada. We’ve got 40,000 workers negotiating this year, and a big battle with major hotel brands. So that’s on tap this year. And also, of course, the 2024 US elections.
On the organizing front, since you’re making this big investment, where are you planning to spend that money? Any specific places or industries?
Mills: We’re just in New York for our major governance meetings right now. That’s a conversation amongst our leadership and our locals. We’ve been heavily focused on growing in the South and non-union places, but we also have cities where we have a medium density, and an investment in those cities could get you to maximum density, and those are markets that are important to the industry. That’s a real ongoing discussion and deliberation within the union.
Do you feel like you have enough resources to move the needle on union density within your own union?
Mills: I know you followed us, and you know that we really got knocked back during Covid. I think we fought back valiantly and have rebuilt our infrastructure. We’re still a little down. Our membership was about 300,000 before Covid, and now we’re about 275,000. Some of that could still come back, and there’s still some Covid recovery to happen, but it’s gonna require tightening our belts to focus and invest the kind of resources in the non-union organizing. But we’ve organized tens of thousands of workers since Covid. So I feel like the momentum is there, we’re rolling in the right direction, and the convention we’re having this week is like a thousand of our top leaders coming. Money is important in organizing workers, but it’s not the whole story. It’s people, and our members, and their volunteer time, and their willingness to talk to non-union workers, and that army of people—their engagement, along with some financial resources, makes the difference of whether you can really shift the needle in an industry. We intend to do it.
Tell me what your plans are in terms of the 2024 election. You all were one of the most important unions on the ground in the 2020 election, and in the midterms as well.
Mills: Just like I was talking about the army of volunteers within our union that it’ll take to shift on union organizing, the heart of our political program is members who take leaves of absence from their jobs to knock on doors in their community. Their ability to cut through a lot of the noise, the apathy around the elections, all of the challenges—that’s the heart of it. Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada are key battleground states for us. One way I think about it is, it’s an overall landscape fight. Are we gonna be on offense for the next four years, organizing, negotiating big contracts, pushing forward as a labor movement? Which I think we could do with the backing of the Biden administration. Or are we gonna be on defense, with the Trump 2025 plan coming with the long knives for the union?
You talk to the same kinds of people I do. I feel like the enthusiasm to beat Trump in 2020 was strong and pure, and now it’s much more leavened with people being upset with Biden on certain issues. Is this going to be harder than it was four years ago?
Mills: I have two things to say about it. Our members are the same people you’re seeing polls of, so all of that is real. One, we try to cut through it. I just think about Philadelphia, for example, there was all this narrative about African American Democrats in Philly not turning out much. Our strategy was to go door to door talking about our hospitality training programs. And did people have a job, and were they looking to get a job in the industry? Connecting with them about real life issues. After that, pivoting to talking about candidates is a completely different conversation. When you’re actually talking about what matters to people in their daily lives, and then connecting that to the election. So the apathy is real, but there are strategies to cut through it.
On the broader thing you’re sort of getting at, I have this author I like, Rebecca Solnit. And she has this quote that politics is not a love affair, it’s a chess game. We work hard with our members on how to build power for working people… Does everyone love the current administration? Absolutely not. Are the stakes so stark and clear about what Trump would mean for us? Yes.
What do you think more broadly about what the labor movement’s relationship with the Democratic Party should be? It’s very easy for labor to fall into the trap of being taken for granted by the Democrats, because they think they’re the only game in town.
Mills: I just think it’s about union members and working people being engaged in the party. Running for office. In the town where I grew up, when I was working for the union there, I was the treasurer of the Democratic Party. And we had a whole program where dozens of union members ran for office, and our community allies ran for office. In Nevada, the Culinary Union members run for office… In other places where our political work has gone on long, we get to this point where we recognize that the party is only gonna respond to the level of organization of the workers. The more organized we are, the more responsive party we have. And if we have our own members get involved and push the party in that way as well? Those are the things we need to do.
When I spoke to you for my book, you talked about the way that unions can benefit small-d democracy, and make this country more of a small-d democratic place. How do you think about that, especially in the context of this election where there’s so much talk about the threat to democracy?
Mills: Members, every day, with a contract on the shop floor, are engaged in small-d democracy. All the time. Building committees with their coworkers, going to delegate a manager about an issue, electing shop stewards, having meetings where they deliberate over contracts and engage in negotiations… People with small-d democracy experience and working class life experience are then leading in the community, in politics. That experience helps. The second part of that point is: thinking about Trump’s support in the Midwest, for example, or all of those Rust Belt states, it’s no surprise that the weakening of the unions in those areas—the unions are massive organizations that are trusted messengers of information to talk about things. When you don’t have the infrastructure of the unions in places like that, then you’re vulnerable to all sorts of the Trump nonsense, lies, and stuff like that.
There’s a lot of discussion right now about the gap between the the good state of the economy according to many economic indicators, and the negative way that Americans say they see the economy. Do you think the economy is working for your members?
Mills: The Biden administration did a great job with inflation and the consumer price index and whatnot. But those things don’t actually track how much people pay for gas or groceries or rent. So there’s a disconnect between the narrative of the capital-E Economy, and then the small-e economy of people paying their bills. I think it’s both true that, with big economic measures, the administration does a good job handling them, but that doesn’t mean that people can get by every day. So our job as a union is to bring our members together, bring more workers into the union, negotiate with companies where there’s tons of money, and bring economic change to people. When our members are empowered through direct economic action themselves, they can change that equation.
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Previously, in union interviews: An Interview With Sara Nelson About ‘One Member, One Vote’; An Interview With a Journalist Who Has Been on Strike For More Than 500 Days; Shawn Fain Talks About Class War, Biden, and How to Eat an Elephant.
My book about the labor movement, “The Hammer,” is for sale wherever books are sold. (I will also send you an autographed copy for $40 if you like.) If you care about the working class, I think you would like it. I’ll be speaking this weekend at a fundraising dinner for the Louisville DSA—Saturday, June 22 at 6 pm at the First Unitarian Church in Louisville, KY. Tickets and info are here. If you’re in the area, come on out, it’s a great cause. If you’re interested in bringing me to your city to speak, email me.
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