Union Island

June 5, 2008, The Sun Post

 
By BEN TORTER
 
After battling for more than a year to unionize Fisher Island workers, the Service Workers International Union Local 11 and island officials have reached an agreement, part of which is not to talk to the media.

The only information about the deal came in the form of a vague press release: “The agreement addresses wages and benefits for property service employees in the first community association in Miami to become unionized.”

The union had launched a blitzkrieg in an attempt to unionize Fisher Island’s approximately 700 workers. It led a flotilla of boats to the island in November to get the message out that the island’s beaches, below the mean high-tide line, are open to the public. In October, the union filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 19 workers, alleging that the Fisher Island ferry service discriminates against Haitian, Hispanic and black workers for requiring them to ride in a worker’s lounge separate from residents and guests. The events received extensive media coverage slanted in favor of the SEIU.

Island leaders answered by raising workers’ minimum wage to $10 per hour and made family health care available for $139 per month. That’s more than SEIU members earn at the University of Miami, whose custodial workers unionized in 2006.

The SEIU suffered a severe setback when one of its star front-men, Fisher Island security guard Willie Floyd, was arrested on felony charges of unemployment compensation fraud and grand theft in April.
 
There were a few embarrassing headlines, and then the fight vanished from the media radar. It didn’t even make the papers last month when the union dropped the two building permit appeals it had filed with the Miami Beach Board of Adjustment on behalf of Floyd against the island for a couple of new condo projects.
 
The rest of the May 29 press release appears to have been written as vaguely as possible for minimum media appeal.
 
“For many years, I was based in Manhattan, where my northeastern portfolio of commercial properties was staffed by SEIU Local 32BJ members,” said Mark James, president and chief executive officer of the Fisher Island Community Association. “The relationship was a constructive one, and it is my hope and expectation that we will achieve the same level of partnership here at the Fisher Island Community Association.”