Unions’ Feud Leads to Moving of Journalism Awards Ceremony

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/nyregion/24unions.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y


Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

Bruce Raynor leads both the main apparel workers’ union and the Sidney Hillman Foundation.
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
Published: May 23, 2010

A foundation named for Sidney Hillman, the famed apparel industry labor leader, has decided to move its annual journalism awards ceremony because of an embarrassing breach in union solidarity — a labor union has threatened to disrupt the event.

The Sidney Hillman Foundation, which gives prizes to journalistic endeavors that foster social justice, is moving the ceremony, scheduled for Wednesday, out of the Hudson Theater on West 44th Street because the union representing hotel and restaurant workers threatened to picket and not serve those attending the cocktail reception before the ceremony.

The dispute stems from an intralabor conflict that has followed the failed merger of the hotel workers’ union and the apparel workers’ union, whose president, Bruce Raynor, is also president of the Hillman foundation.

“We would prefer that Mr. Raynor not conduct his events in hotels where we represent the workers,” said Peter Ward, the president of Local 6 of the hotel workers’ union. “Our union and our members don’t want to serve this guy.”

In informing the judges of the foundation’s prize competition about the decision to move the event, Alexandra Lescaze, the foundation’s executive director, wrote that the feuding unions “have been in the process of divorcing for some time now and like many divorces, it has been painful and full of conflict.”

The awards ceremony is moving from the Hudson Theater, part of the Millennium Broadway Hotel, to TheTimesCenter, an auditorium in The New York Times Building.

FULL story at link.