Unite Here Union to Rejoin AFL-CIO

The 265,000-member hotel and restaurant employees union Unite Here announced Thursday that it is rejoining the AFL-CIO four years after it and several other unions broke away to form a rival coalition.

The return of Unite Here is another blow to the effort of that coalition, Change to Win, to chart a separate course for organized labor. It also marks the latest sign of how labor's internal divisions are distracting attention and resources at a moment when it could be capitalizing on the Democratic ascendance in Washington.

In 2004, Unite, an apparel workers' union, merged with Here, a hotel and restaurant workers' union. The merger combined the financial resources of Unite -- which had shrunk to about 100,000 members because of the decline of the U.S. textile industry -- with the larger membership and growth potential of Here, whose jobs could not be sent abroad. A year later, the merged union broke off from the AFL-CIO to join Change to Win, whose goal was to focus more on organizing than the AFL-CIO had.

But Change to Win has fallen short of its own goals, with only limited victories in organizing new members. Leaders of the Change to Win argue that the AFL-CIO focuses too much on preserving the gains of its existing members and not on organizing new workers to stem labor's decline. Critics accuse those leaders of promising employers relatively mild contract negotiations in return for letting workplaces unionize.