Unions Plan to Merge to Counter Corporate Giants

Two of the nation’s most aggressive labor unions said Thursday that they planned to combine to better contend with national companies that are growing bigger themselves through mergers.

The leaders of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, known as UNITE, and the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees union, or HERE, said it wasn’t the California grocery strike and lockout that brought the two together. But they said that long-running dispute underscored why they needed to take a page from corporate giants that have grown more powerful and in some cases more defiant as their industries consolidated.

“What the grocery strike speaks to is that you had giant national companies doing battle, the stage was national and global,” said UNITE’s president, Bruce Raynor. “You need to have strong unions that are capable of fighting ... the coming battles between workers and employers wanting to lower their living standards.”

Executives with UNITE and HERE said a marriage would vastly expand their resources and reach, enhancing their capability to organize their core targets of women and immigrant workers, people usually employed in low-wage industries. The newly formed union would have a total active membership of about 440,000, from textile workers in the Southeast to bellhops in Santa Monica.

The merger plans reflect an ongoing consolidation in organized labor, which is trying to restructure amid the relentless shifting of manufacturing jobs to overseas and pressures from employers at the bargaining table. The merged union also hopes the combination will make it more effective at organizing workers in service industries, which have been growing but have been difficult to unionize, partly because of high employee turnover.

The combined unions could face an immediate test in Southern California. In mid-April, HERE’s contracts with at least nine of the largest hotels in Los Angeles are set to expire. Talks haven’t begun, and some observers said the hotels, which have been hurt by the slowdown in tourism in recent years, could be seeking cuts in healthcare benefits.

Both the UNITE president and John Wilhelm, president of HERE, are Ivy League graduates who built their reputation in the labor movement through aggressive tactics in organizing and bargaining with employers.

Raynor, who would serve as general president of the newly formed union, UNITE HERE, forged alliances with civil rights and community leaders to organize workers in the South. Wilhelm employed similar tactics in helping turn the major casino hotels in Las Vegas into a predominantly unionized industry where even dishwashers can make $12 an hour and receive health insurance fully paid for by the employer.

“They represent the new generation of labor leaders; they’re very strategic in their approach,” said Kent Wong, director of the Center for Labor Research and Education at UCLA.

While the combining unions contend their strategic approaches will help them increase membership, other union mergers have failed to reverse a long decline in union rolls. As of last year, 12.9% of American wage and salary workers were union members, down from 13.3% in 2002 and 20.1% in 1983, according to the Labor Department. Excluding government, where the unionization rate has held steady at about 37%, the percentage of private-sector employees who are union members has fallen by more than half since 1983, to 8.2% last year.

HERE had about 255,000 members nationally as of last year, an increase of about 15,000 from five years earlier, said Ron Seeber, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. HERE, which has about 30,000 members in California, is one of the few unions that have been growing.

In contrast, Seeber said, UNITE has seen its membership fall sharply from 285,000 in 1998 to 218,000 last year, as more jobs in apparel and textile manufacturing have fled to other countries. UNITE said Thursday that it currently represented about 200,000 workers, although it has added thousands employed in laundry services. It did not provide a breakdown of membership in California, but the union has very few members in the Southland’s large apparel industry.

Yet UNITE is financially stronger, in large part because of its long history and holdings, which include the Amalgamated Bank in New York. The union had net assets of almost $89 million at end of 2002, according to the latest Labor Department filings. By comparison, HERE’s net assets stood at about $20 million as of early 2003.

Wilhelm, who will be president of the new union’s hospitality industries, said Thursday that the two unions were a terrific fit. “We represent and organize the same kind of workers -- service workers, immigrants, African Americans, women.... Our members wear the uniforms that UNITE members wash and clean.”

Wilhelm said the two unions began discussions of a merger last fall, and boards of both unions unanimously approved it in recent days. Members are expected to ratify the merger in the summer.

Ada Torres, head of HERE Local 681 in Orange County, which represents workers at Disneyland hotels, said she was thrilled at the merger. “This is a great move for our union. It’s going to give us a lot of strength,” she said.

Analysts said there are clearly plenty of opportunities to organize in service industries such as tourism and retail, where jobs are growing and face little threat of being shipped overseas. According to BNA Inc., only 5% of workers at hotels and motels were unionized in 2002, compared with about 13% for all industries, including government.

Miguel Contreras, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said he welcomed the merger. “I think you’ll see some very aggressive, innovative tactics. They’re going to go after chains at the national level.”

Contreras added that the new union could bear its style in the upcoming negotiations with the hotels in Los Angeles.

“This merger will be quickly tested,” he said.

John Stoddard, general manager of the Wilshire Grand and a member of the L.A. Hotel Council’s negotiating team, said he wasn’t sure how the merger would affect the talks.

“I know the laundry washing union is a big union and has a lot of resources at its disposal,” he said, adding: “We’re hoping their demands are realistic. We can’t afford to make any rich offers.”