Organized labor is caught short-handed while UNITE HERE's two presidents are locked in a power struggle. The irony is that despite its progressive values and innovative organizing tactics, the union, which represents 400,000 workers in the garment and hotel industries has become a casualty of its own constitution, which vests near total control in the hands of the presidents...provided they agree with each other.

General President Bruce Raynor, formerly the president of UNITE, is racing against time to undo the merger and lead his old union out of UH before he faces reelection at the convention in June.

Former HERE locals comprise the 60% of the membership of UNITE HERE and will therefore send the majority of delegates to vote on the union's next president.

"Raynor really wants to hold onto power," said Bill Fletcher, Jr., Director of Field Services and Education Department at AFGE and the author of the book "Solidarity Divided,"  "Now counting the numbers realizing he could lose out to Wilhelm."

Wilhelm, formerly the president of HERE, is trying to keep UNITE HERE together and consolidate his own power over the whole organization, with the help of a HERE-allied majority on the union's executive board.

Ironically, Raynor and Wilhelm are hamstrung by a constitution they negotiated themselves. Each president has veto power over the other on almost all major decisions, from the budget to organizing campaigns.

Wilhelm and his faction of former HERE officials control the union's General Executive Board, but the board has little power to act independently when the presidents don't agree.

The simmering tensions within UNITE HERE devolved into all-out war in December of 2008, when president Wilhelm commandeered an emergency meeting on the union's Executive Committee in Long Island, NY. The was ostensibly called to plan strategy on Employee Free Choice and discuss the union's own budget crisis.

Wilhelm and his allies shocked the UNITE faction when they used their majority to reset the agenda pass a series of surprise "budget steps" that would, amongst other things, have abolished the union's communications department and most of its in-house legal team.

Outraged by what he saw as an attempted hostile takeover and an unconstitutional usurpation of his authority, Raynor filed a federal lawsuit against his fellow president, asking the court to reverse the resolutions and stop Wilhelm from reintroducing them at the upcoming General Executive Board meeting in Washington, D.C. in early February. The meeting came and went, but the court didn't act.

At the same GEB meeting, the UNITE faction tried unsuccessfully to pass a resolution that would have allowed UNITE to secede.

Shortly before the meeting, the UNITE faction filed a separate federal lawsuit against Wilhelm and his allies demanding that the constitution of UNITE HERE be declared null and void because the 2004 merger between the two unions had failed to achieve its stated objective of organizing large numbers of unorganized workers.

Legal experts said it is extremely unlikely that a court would dissolve UNITE HERE's constitution in response to the lawsuit. The court would have to make its decision based on UNITE HERE's own constitution, and there's nothing in the constitution that allows for dissolution on these grounds. In fact, the constitution says that the union cannot be dissolved if even three locals support its continued existence.

Unless some kind of deal can be brokered between now and June, it appears likely that the Raynor faction will lose at the convention. If that happens, individual UNITE-allied locals could begin the slow, painful process of withdrawing from UNITE HERE individually.

Regardless of who has the legal right to leave whom, the merger of UNITE and HERE appears in retrospect to have been a marriage of convenience based more on money and ambition than true compatibility. Like so many of these opportunistic partnership, this one has soured.

"The UNITE HERE merger made no sense from the beginning," said author and trade unionist Bill Fletcher, Jr.. At its inception, the UNITE HERE merger was billed as a model model for the future of the labor movement. The the two unions were both giants in the Change to Win coalition, a group of dissident unions whose leaders engineered a dramatic split with the AFL-CIO in 2005.
The leaders of the merger made no bones about the financial incentives. Wilhelm sold the deal to delegates at an HERE convention, saying "they've got a great deal more money than we do."

Indeed, UNITE came into the marriage with about $500 million in assets, including its own bank. HERE had few assets to speak of and many of its pension funds were dangerously underfunded. However, UNITE had only 150,000 members at the time of the merger and Raynor later admitted that he feared the prospect of a declining membership base. HERE had a larger membership base and was thought to have significantly greater opportunities for expansion in the growing hospitality sector.

Despite the high-minded Change to Win rhetoric about the importance of organizing along industry lines, UNITE and HERE represented quite different industries. There were areas of overlap, but casino dealers in the Las Vegas didn't have a lot in common with textile workers in New York.

As organizations, the unions themselves didn't have much in common, either, experts said.  The question is not necessarily whether one is approach is superior, but whether these different ideals can coexist in a single, functional union.

Like any troubled married couple, UNITE and HERE have the same fights over and over. The UNITE faction complains that HERE is profligate with union funds and ineffective in the field. HERE counters that UNITE's expectations are unrealistic.

UNITE says HERE is giving too much money to its pet locals, even though those locals can already fund themselves with dues. HERE says these locals are getting extra money because they need support to grow.