Will Unions Organize Again? Why Some Succeed & Others Don’t

He looks like Central Casting’s idea of an organizer. Domenic Mario Bozzotto, president of Local 26, is bearded, olive-skinned, tieless, with the bravura and streetcorner patois of a Damon Runyon tough guy, but also the sweetness of a parish priest. At this moment, on a Tuesday morning in December, he has brazenly commandeered a conference room in Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel, where his negotiating committee of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) will shortly commence the fifth session of contract talks, now deadlocked against a strike deadline of Saturday midnight.

When the management team walks into the room, at eleven sharp, the workers will already have been there for two hours, psyching themselves into a ...