UNITE HERE doesn’t have that kind of treasury and can’t afford to hire non-member canvassers, as some unions do. But beginning in Nevada, where it’s long been much the biggest union, it has enlisted its hotel housekeepers, waiters, and cooks to become the state’s most potent door-knocking and phone-banking force, often alongside the Democratic machine built by the late Sen. Harry Reid. During Taylor’s tenure, the union began playing a similar role in other key swing states where its locals had similarly motivated members. In 2020, it mobilized many hundreds of its members in four swing states that gave Joe Biden the presidency: Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and, of course, Nevada. Its precinct walkers came from those states’ unionized
hotels, as well as from those in such neighboring states as New York and California. Moreover, as UNITE HERE secretary-treasurer Gwen Mills (who now succeeds Taylor as president) told me in 2020, the union’s electoral training program for members also provides union organizing training as well. In speaking with Taylor last month, he voiced both a cautious optimism about his union’s trajectory, and some frustration at the labor movement’s hesitation to exploit the unusually pro-union climate now abroad in the land. "Right now," he said, "we have a high level of worker militance, the
highest level of public approval of unions in 60 years, the most pro-union administration in our history, and a labor shortage that gives workers more power. If we fail to take advantage of all that, historians will say we didn’t do justice to the next generation of workers." Doing justice, in Taylor’s view, would require waging a unified labor campaign to organize the commanding heights of the economy—companies like Amazon. "That will take not one union but a powerful coalition of unions, a force like the CIO in the 1930s," he said. "We have to increase union density if we’re
ever going to reduce the crazy levels of economic inequality that we have. The whole movement needs to step up."
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