Union Intimidation Campaign Targets Bride Over Wedding Website Hotel Listing
Lauren Johnson didn't expect her wedding planning to include a protester outside her workplace holding a sign with her name on it.
But that's exactly what happened after the South Bend, Indiana, bride listed a nearby DoubleTree by Hilton as an option on her wedding website. She didn't book rooms there. She didn't reserve a block. She simply noted the hotel was available for out-of-town guests.
That was enough to make her the target of a harassment campaign by Unite Here Local 1.
According to reporting by the Washington Post, the intimidation included calls to Johnson and her friends at their personal phones and workplaces, mock wedding invitations sent to guests urging a boycott, and the protester stationed outside her workplace with a sign reading: "TELL LAUREN JOHNSON TO BOYCOTT DOUBLETREE HOTEL SOUTH BEND."
The union's justification? It's boycotting the South Bend DoubleTree because a Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Chicago — a different hotel, different brand, different state — hasn't reached a contract with the union. Both are owned by United Capital Corp.
Workers Pay the Price
This isn't worker advocacy — it's a coercion campaign that uses third parties as leverage to force a business into submission. And the people who lose are workers.
Workers at the South Bend DoubleTree depend on bookings to keep their jobs and their hours. If this intimidation campaign succeeds in driving down business, they face reduced shifts, lost income, or worse. Hotel staff who had nothing to do with negotiations in Chicago are now collateral damage in a union pressure play.
Wedding guests face higher lodging costs if the union succeeds in forcing the hotel into an expensive contract or driving it out of business altogether. And a private citizen planning her wedding has been subjected to workplace harassment and invasive demands for no reason other than listing a nearby hotel.
None of this serves the workers Unite Here claims to represent. It serves union leadership.
Power Over People
Unions that focus on paychecks, workplace safety, and skills training earn trust by delivering value to their members. Unions that deploy harassment tactics, target uninvolved parties, and treat workers' livelihoods as bargaining chips in disputes hundreds of miles away do not.
The Washington Post noted that one of Unite Here's predecessors was once controlled by organized crime, a connection severed by federal law enforcement. But the tactics on display in South Bend suggest the mentality has endured: intimidation, coercion, and punitive campaigns against anyone who doesn't fall in line.
Workers deserve representation that puts their interests first — not organizations that prioritize power plays over the people paying dues. They deserve a labor system where disputes are resolved through negotiation and due process, not by weaponizing private citizens and punishing employees who depend on the businesses being targeted.
When unions operate like this, workers lose twice: once when their jobs are threatened by campaigns designed to cripple their employer, and again when the public sees union tactics for what they are and turns away from supporting organized labor altogether.
American workers deserve better than to be used as pawns in intimidation campaigns. They deserve unions that serve them, not the other way around.