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UNITE HERE
UNITE HERE
Founded2004
Members
450,000
AffiliationsChange to Win Coalition
Websitewww.unitehere.org

UNITE HERE is a North American labor union with more than 450,000 active members in the United States and Canada, predominantly in the hotel, food service, apparel and textile manufacturing, laundry, warehouse and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 by the merger of UNITE (formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union).

The general president of UNITE HERE is Bruce S. Raynor, and the president of UNITE HERE's hospitality division is John W. Wilhelm. Wilhelm shares executive, budgetary, and personnel authority with Raynor.

In 2005, UNITE HERE withdrew from the AFL-CIO and joined the Change to Win Coalition, along with several other unions, including the Teamsters, SEIU and the UFCW. UNITE HERE Vice-President Edgar Romney was elected the first secretary-treasurer of the new labor federation.

Hotel Bargaining

UNITE HERE has fought for substantial wage increases for workers in the traditionally low-paid hotel and tourism sector. UNITE HERE also supports making it easier for workers to join unions through voluntary card check recognition agreements with employers, where the employer agrees not to oppose its employees joining the union and agrees to recognize and bargain with the union after a majority of its employees sign union membership cards, rather than requiring a more costly and time consuming election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.

In 2006, major UNITE HERE hotel contracts in Toronto, New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Honolulu and Chicago will expire, raising the possibility of a multi-city strike to support the union's collective bargaining objectives. Under the leadership of Mike Casey, UNITE HERE is also currently engaged in a dispute with various hotels in the San Francisco Bay Area. The San Francisco workers have been without a contract since 2004 and could also participate in any broader work stoppage.

Prominent celebrities such as actor Danny Glover, Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and former U.S. Senator and Democratic Party Vice-Presidential candidate John Edwards have endorsed UNITE HERE's 2006 contract campaign.

Yale University

Since 1987, graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) at Yale University have been trying to organize a union, first affiliated with HERE and now with UNITE HERE. UNITE HERE represents two other groups of employees on campus: clerical and technical employees who are members of UNITE HERE Local 34, and service and maintenance employees who are members of UNITE HERE Local 35. The Yale TAs' organization is now called the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), and along with the other UNITE HERE locals at Yale, is affiliated to the Federation of Hospital and University Employees. To date, Yale has refused to recognize or bargain with GESO.

Political Contributions

UNITE HERE is listed as having donated $10,000 to Republican representative Richard Pombo's (CA-11) 2006 re-election campaign.[1], even though Pombo generally votes against what union activists consider "pro-labor" legislation [2]. However, he chairs both the House Resources Committee and the Office of Native American & Insular Affairs subcommittee which are responsible for regulating Indian Tribal gaming [3], and "UNITE HERE represents more than 90,000 workers in the gaming industry in the United States...[and]...the fastest growing segment of the gaming industry can be found on Native American tribal lands". [4]

Political Action

UNITE HERE has also been affiliated with various political issues, such as the Iraq war and Immigration rights. On May 6th UNITE HERE sanctioned affiliation with a pro - immigration rally (which followed the "Day Without a Mexican" rotest) in Malcolm X park in Washington, DC. When the union was still "UNITE!" It participated in protests against the Iraq war.


See also

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