UNITE HERE
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| Founded | 2004 |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | UNITE and HERE |
| Members | 264,104 (2014) |
| Affiliation | AFL-CIO, CLC |
| Key people |
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| Office location | New York City |
| Country | United States, Canada |
| Website | unitehere |
UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with more than 265,000 active members The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 by the merger of Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE) and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE).
In 2005, UNITE HERE withdrew from the AFL-CIO and joined the Change to Win Federation, along with several other unions, including the Teamsters, SEIU and the UFCW. In May 2009, union president Bruce Raynor (originally from UNITE) left UNITE HERE, taking with him numerous local unions and between 105,000 and 150,000 members, mostly garment workers and a labor-owned bank, Amalgamated Bank. They formed a new Service Employees International Union (SEIU) affiliate called Workers United.
On September 17, 2009, UNITE HERE announced that it would re-affiliate with the AFL-CIO.
Bruce Raynor, then president of UNITE, and John W. Wilhelm of HERE, became close friends after meeting on a HERE picket line at Yale University in 2003. The two men quickly concluded that their unions should merge. UNITE HERE was formed in 2004 by the merger of UNITE (the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union). The impetus for the merger was that UNITE was wealthy but losing a significant number of members, while HERE had little cash but had a large number of organizing opportunities which could lead to hundreds of thousands of new members. The merged entity had 440,000 active members and about 400,000 retired members in both the United States and Canada. Raynor was elected general president of the merged union and Wilhelm was named president of the merged union's hospitality division, but the two men shared executive, budgetary, and personnel duties.
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