The nation's leading apparel workers' union and the leading union for hotel and restaurant workers have voted to merge, union officials said yesterday.þþThe merger will bring together two unions that are among the most aggressive in organizing nonunion workers, especially immigrants. Unite, formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, has 180,000 members, while the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, or HERE, has 250,000 members. þþBy voting to approve the merger yesterday at a meeting in Los Angeles, the board of the hotel employees' union moved to create a larger organization whose members range from seamstresses in New York's Chinatown to hotel housekeepers in San Francisco.þþÿWe think it makes sense to have like-minded unions join together to be bigger and stronger,ÿ said John W. Wilhelm, president of the hotel employees' union. ÿWe think the organizing programs of both unions will be dramatically accelerated.ÿ þþThe merged union will be based in Manhattan and will be called Unite HERE. þþThe merger unites two charismatic leaders of organized labor, Mr. Wilhelm and Unite's president, Bruce Raynor.þþMr. Raynor, a 54-year-old Cornell University graduate, will be general president of the merged union. Mr. Raynor's star rose when he successfully spearheaded a 17-year effort to organize textile workers at J. P. Stevens and win a union contract for them. þþMr. Wilhelm, a 58-year-old Yale graduate, will be president of the merged union's hospitality division. Mr. Wilhelm became a labor movement star by leading efforts to organize 22,000 hotel and casino workers in Las Vegas and by orchestrating organized labor's about-face on immigrant workers. Labor unions are now seeking to organize immigrants after decades of shunning them as a harmful force that pulled down wages. þþThe deal calls for Mr. Raynor and Mr. Wilhelm to have joint decision-making authority on budget, personnel and strategy. ÿWe will be co-presidents,ÿ Mr. Wilhelm said. þþAs part of the deal, several union officials said, Mr. Raynor and Mr. Wilhelm agreed to cooperate to help Mr. Wilhelm succeed John J. Sweeney as president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Mr. Sweeney has said that he plans to seek another four-year term in July 2005. Mr. Wilhelm declined to say whether he was interested in that position.þþUnite was formed in 1995 from the merger of two unions with illustrious histories: the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. The garment workers' union was founded in 1900 and had 457,000 members at its height. The clothing and textile workers' union, founded in 1914, had 569,000 workers at its peak and was famous for its successes in organizing workers in the antiunion South. The hotel union was founded in 1891 and at one time had 400,000 workers.þþThe new union is likely to create a strong presence on the progressive end of organized labor. Unite once overwhelmingly represented manufacturing workers, but as hundreds of thousands of apparel jobs have moved abroad, it has focused increasingly on organizing workers in distribution centers and industrial laundries.þþÿThis merger is very reasonable because the workers they're organizing are quite similar,ÿ said Richard Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University. ÿThey're focusing on lower-skilled, relatively low-wage immigrant workers.ÿþþUnite is a wealthy union, owning the Amalgamated Bank and considerable real estate assets, while the larger hotel employees' union has little in the way of financial assets. þþÿThis merged union will have tremendous financial resources and wherewithal so we can stand up to any employer,ÿ Mr. Raynor said. ÿThis gives us financial security for organizing and for strikes when we have thousands of members in the street. But our unions also have a history of developing very close relationships with employers that want to take the high road.ÿþþFor decades, the apparel workers' union has worked on programs with management at the Xerox Corporation and at Hart Schaffner & Marx, the clothing company. The hotel employees' union has worked closely with the hotel-casino industry in Las Vegas in a strategy that has enabled both the casinos and their unionized work force to grow.þþMr. Wilhelm said his union was not in financial straits and did not need to merge. þþÿNeither union needs to do this,ÿ he said. ÿOur union can keep going in our present form. But we don't want to keep going the same way. We want to organize and grow in a way that works best. We think this is a great opportunity.ÿþþOver the last two years, the hotel employees' union had considered a merger with the Service Employees International Union, but both unions decided against the move, labor leaders said.þþMr. Raynor and Mr. Wilhelm have repeatedly urged the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and the nation's union leaders to devote more resources to organizing to help reverse labor's slide. Last year 8.2 percent of private-sector workers were in unions, down from 35 percent in the 1950's.þþÿVirtually every union merger in the last 20 years has led to less organizing, not more,ÿ said Richard Bensinger, former organizing director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. ÿThis one is clearly designed to be forward looking and to produce more organizing.ÿþþþþ
Source: NY Times
