UNITE HERE! now uniting separately

The ugly divorce of an international union became final last night.

UNITE HERE! - the result of the 2004 merger of two unions, UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, and HERE, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Workers - wasn't so united after all.

After a five-year unhappy "marriage," one-third of the merged union, which had represented 440,000 members, left to create a new organization called Workers United, the new union announced yesterday in Center City.

Lending his support and celebrity to Workers United was actor, film director and political activist Danny Glover, whose parents were active in the postal workers union and the NAACP.

"I chose this side because of their fresh ideas and meaningful response to the work of union organizing," said Glover, who joined UNITE in 2002 and fought for immigrants and other workers' rights in textile, hotel, laundry and food industries here and around the world.

The entire UNITE HERE! Philadelphia membership of nearly 9,000 joined the new union, said Lynne Fox, manager of the Philadelphia Joint Board of the new Workers United.

"It just didn't work out," said Fox, who gave up her seat as an international vice president of UNITE HERE! "We had just big philosophical differences between the two unions.

Their differences included how to spend money, how to organize and how to treat staff, Fox said.

Sniping between the two unions reached a fever pitch recently, prompting two union heavyweights to plead for their separation in the interest of the union movement.

"When a merger doesn't work, it is in the best interests of the members to break it up," according to a Mar. 13 letter from United Steelworkers and the United Auto Workers Union and sent to UNITE HERE! leaders. *