Unions call any employer “union Busters” if they don’t agree with any union demands in contract negotiations or any attempt to organize. I have seen many times where union staff fought hard with their own union which sometimes leads to strikes and walkouts so I guess it’s fair to call them union busters!

 For example the National Education Association Staff Organization (NEASO) was locked out of their jobs without pay by NEA management after an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike over compensation and working conditions, UAW Staff United Strike in 2024, AFL-CIO Staff Union Contract Dispute in 2023, UNITE split from HERE, morphing into Workers United (WU) and affiliating with the Service Employees (SEIU) which left their staff filing ULPs against the unions, debate over the union’s internal culture has broken open around the question of pink sheeting which is the practice of collecting and using personal information about staffers and workers in organizing drives.

In the years I worked in the labor movement, it proved to be a every person fight for themselves environment, many of those years holding a management position where the staff and employees were viewed as dispensable. Union hostilities are not just limited to internal union struggles, they are prevalent at the highest levels of the international labor movement and many times lower tier union employees, and even rank and file members get injured, I have witnessed it firsthand many times.

In 2008 the Healthcare organizing war got so heated between the California Nurses Association and SEIU union that at a Labor Notes convention in Detroit it led to violence.  As the banquet began 200-300 chanting SEIU members and staffers rushed through the side door of the hotel, nearest the banquet hall. The doors had apparently been opened from inside by SEIU staff attending the conference. Most were wearing their SEIU purple T-shirts and many carried signs denouncing the California Nurses Association. Then CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro had originally been scheduled to address the banquet; this fight lasted for more than forty minutes with several hospitalized and one person suffering from a heart attack.

Union solidary in many ways is a lie, they will support each other as long as it is convenient and not a moment longer, In fact, Article XX of the AFL-CIO Constitution existed for the purpose of managing and resolving Inter-Union Disputes, Labor, as embodied by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), is perceived by many as a monolithic force but, in reality, is composed of a coalition of sometimes competing interests. Not surprisingly, and often raucously, the unions within the AFL-CIO compete for members in both representation and work assignment disputes which the article was designed to resolve.

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