[project] Part II: A brief history

UNITE
UNITE is the merger of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA). Both unions have a long history of transnational organizing. Eleven years after the ILGWU’s founding in 1900, the ILGWU affiliated with Toronto's Independent Cloakmakers Union (founded 1909). Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America organized men's clothing workers in 1914, organizing laborers in New York and Chicago. Three years later, the ACWA is established in Montreal. The ACWA expanded to include the New York City laundry workers. In 1939 American southerners founded the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA). Six years later, Canada’s Congress of Labor requested the TWUA’s presence in Canada. In the same year the National Textile Workers Union of Canada merged with the TWUA. American Federation of Hosiery Workers merged with the TWUA in 1965. The AWCA and TWUA merged in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). Four years later the United Shoe Workers merged with the ACTWU. In 1983 the United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers’ International Union affiliated with ACTWU. In 1985 the ILGWU and ACTWU collaborated on their first project, helping to form a national industry-labor coalition for a more equitable system of regulating apparel. In 1995 the ILGWU and ACTWU joined to form UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. At this time UNITE represented over 250,000 workers across Canada, the United States and Puerto Rico. The Laundry and Dry Cleaning International Union merged with UNITE in 2002.

HERE
Information on the website is less comprehensive for HERE. HERE received its original charter from the American Federation of Labor on April 24, 1891. The website does not state if HERE subsumed other labor unions. The information includes some pictures with captions from various events.

In 2004 UNITE and HERE merged to form UNITE HERE.

Throughout their history UNITE and HERE’s founding organizations fought for contracts, limited hour workweeks, wage and hour standards, impartial arbitration of disputes, safer working conditions, unemployment insurance plan, employer-paid health and life insurance programs, paid vacation, pension raise, bereavement pay, contract enforcement, and stringent health and safety measures. They established institutions to help their members: they founded health centers to treat tuberculosis in immigrants, a bank with free checking, cooperative apartment housing for members, day care centers, and educational programs.

UNITE and HERE worked with other groups to eliminate North-South differential in cotton textile wage rates, they participated in the civil rights March on Washington campaign, they participated in restaurant boycotts during the civil rights era, they petitioned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for stricter cotton dust standards, they formed a national industry-labor coalition for a more equitable system of regulating apparel, they negotiated a Code of Conduct with the Clothing Manufacturers' Association that required employers to respect international workers' rights, they launched a "Stop Sweatshops" campaign to link union, consumer, student, civil rights and women's groups in the fight against sweatshops at home and abroad, they participated in a coalition of groups to defeat "Fast Track" trade legislation, which would have given the President the authority to negotiate trade deals without Congressional approval.

(Information assimilated from http://www.unitehere.org/about/historyhere.php, http://www.unitehere.org/about/historyunite.php, http://www.unitehere.org/about/history.php, http://www.unitehere.org/presscenter/faq.php.)