A Note on Raynor and Wilhelm

As we chronicle the escalation of the UNITE/HERE showdown, it's easy to lose sight of who the players are and where they come from.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, Labor professor at Cornell, reminds us just how important Raynor and Wilhelm have been to the labor movement,  saying:

These are two unions that are led by two of the greatest organizers this country has ever seen.  They are men who love there unions and somewhere along the line everyone needs to remember that they have done some of the most brilliant organizing in the last 20 years.  The organizing Raynor did in the South, organizing against the textile and apparel industry and whinning hube victories through brilliant campaigns.  The organizing Wilhelm did with the clerical workers at Yale and then turning Las Vegas into a union city.  Very different industries, very different opponents, but they are two incredible leaders. . . . [For] them to be fighting with eachother and not organizing and not bargaining and not building a labor movement, it is devastating.  It should not have gotten to this point.