Call in the Big Guns

One of the country's more progressive unions, UNITE HERE is splitting into its component parts five years after merging. UNITE's former president, Bruce Raynor brought big money but a dying industry. HERE--organizing in hotels and casinos, was in need of cashflow, but had big potential for growth. Both sides have set up web sites, HERE to defend the merger, and UNITE to explain why it needs to end.

Raynor expected Wilhelm to retire by the time the union's convention arrived in summer 2009-- or find a place in the AFL-CIO leadership--after which UNITE would assume control over the whole union. Wilhelm remains however, now with a majority of members from his industries, and a majority on the decision-making executive board. HERE is poised to take control of the union. Raynor cozied up to Andy Stern, president of the nation's "fastest growing" union of service employees, who offered UNITE-side leaders a partnership. Civil war has broken out at the exact wrong time for labor--EFCA entered congress just days ago.

Politico's Ben Smith has followed the story of both unions, which are expending enormous staff time and energy fighting for control of the union--precisely because they envision an organizing windfall when, or if, EFCA passes. Wilhelm wants to keep the union together, maintaining access to the UNITE-owned Amalgamated Bank--with $5 billion in assets--for his time intensive hotel organizing campaigns, which attempt to cultivate strong worker leaders. Raynor changed the governance structure of the bank to ice out HERE leaders, and has since encouraged a secession from the merger, claiming HERE doesn't organize members quickly enough. His allies voted to form a new union, and are trying to gather member support and move into hotel and casino organizing. HERE wants to break from Change to Win, and rejoin the AFL-CIO, but the AFL recently lent its support to Stern's new organizing initiative in gaming, a key HERE jurisdiction.

UNITE is now drawing on their lethal weapon, too--an old friend of Bruce Raynor's, to make the case for a split from HERE.