Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees
former trade union of the United States
The Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE, often stylized UNITE!) was a labor union in the United States clothing industry from 1995–2004.
History
UNITE-ILGWU/ACTWU Merger
UNITE was formed in 1995 as a merger between the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU).
UNITE's core industries were textile and apparel manufacturing, distribution, and retailing, but they also had locals involved in industrial laundry, and manufacturing in other industries.
Jay Mazur served as president of UNITE from its inception until his retirement in 2001. Bruce Raynor was later elected president, where he served until the HERE merger.
UNITE HERE Merger
In 2004, UNITE announced that it would merge with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) to form UNITE HERE. In 2009 most of the apparel and laundry workers in UNITE HERE broke away to form a separate union known as Workers United, which affiliated with the Service Employees International Union.
“Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees” enters the record as former trade union of the United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Union, Needletrades and Industrial can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7886667. VIAF identifies the subject as 140671821. The Library of Congress control number is nr95032552. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995, 2004, 2001 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.