Unions, Disunited

At the very moment that organized labor stands a chance to win major gains in Washington--such as passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, the most important labor legislation in decades--its attention is being diverted by escalating conflicts within its ranks. These include not only SEIU's much-publicized showdown with the United Healthcare Workers-West local in California but a bitter fight among the highly regarded leaders of the merged UNITE HERE.

Prospects looked bright in 2004 for the marriage of UNITE, a union of garment and textile workers, and HERE, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union. Globalization was wiping out much of UNITE's terrain, but the union had money in the bank (and even an actual bank, Amalgamated), with assets of $300 million to $500 million. On the other hand, HERE's industries--hotels, gambling, food--were growing fast, but despite having more members, the union had less than a tenth of UNITE's wealth.

Both unions and their well-educated leaders had reputations as tenacious organizers--Bruce Raynor of UNITE in the South and John Wilhelm of HERE in New Haven and Las Vegas. Starting with fewer than 400,000 members, UNITE HERE hoped to demonstrate how unions could organize on a big scale. But now the two leaders and the union are fiercely divided, with Raynor's UNITE faction denouncing the merger as failed and even suing to get out of it. Raynor's group seems likely to try a different merger, with the nearly 2 million-member SEIU.

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