The AFL-CIO convention just keeps getting better and better. This morning the 250,000 strong UNITE HERE announced their reaffiliation with the AFL-CIO. For those just tuning in UNITE HERE was one of six unions that left the labor federation in 2005. They formed their own coalition, Change to Win (CtW) because they felt the AFL spent too much time on the Democrats and not enough on organizing new workers.

The other CtW unions are Teamsters, the Carpenters, national powerhouse SEIU, the farmworkers (UFW), and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW). These six unions were some of the largest in the movement claiming a third of the union members in the country. They were also some of the most innovative and activist unions in the business. While many of the old school, business-oriented unions had abandoned the social justice elements of the movement, SEIU and UNITE HERE in particular had reemphasized their progressive roots. They allied with other left-wing movements and championed issues like immigration reform that the larger movement had long ignored. SEIU and UNITE HERE were also responsible for two of the most successful organizing drives of the past forty years, turning LA and Las Vegas respectively into union towns.

Thus, there was a fair amount of excitement when they left the AFL-CIO. There was talk in some circles of a revitalizing split, akin to the CIO’s emergence in the thirties. But it quickly became evident that no rebirth would be forthcoming. CtW ran up against the same impassable barrier as their AFL counterparts: our nation’s medieval labor laws. The only way to really move forward is to support progressive politicians who back your interests (like organizing the public sector, where unions have been growing). In short, CtW can’t organize any better than the AFL, so there isn't really a reason for CtW to exist. Then in the last year or so, UNITE HERE and SEIU started feuding for reasons too internecine to get into.  Really, it was only a matter of time until the UNITE HERE side came back to the AFL’s fold.

“We felt that Change To Win was too dominated by SEIU, and after last year’s election, where AFL and CtW worked together for President Obama, it was time to heal the split,” Pilaf Weiss, a UNITE HERE spokeswoman told me. “With the exception of SEIU we still work with all the other unions in Change to Win. They are all strong allies of ours.”

New AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka has stated that reuniting the labor movement will be one of his primary goals. This will rightly be seen as a feather in his cap. But the rest of the CtW unions, who don’t necessarily have UNITE HERE's extraordinary wariness of SEIU, will probably be a tougher sell.