Who

Bruce Raynor is head of UNITE HERE, a 450,000-member union that represents service sector and apparel industry employees, most of them low-wage immigrant and minority workers.

Backstory

The son of a truck driver, Raynor graduated from Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 1972 and promptly went to work organizing textile workers. In the early '70s, he helped organize the campaign against J.P. Stevens, which was later the basis of the 1979 film Norma Rae. Moving into union leadership, in 1981 he became a vice president of ACTWU, then was named executive vice president of UNITE when it was formed through the merger of ACTWU and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. He became head of UNITE in 1998, and president of the combined UNITE HERE when it merged with the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union in 2004.

Of note

The legendarily temperamental Raynor is known as an extraordinarily aggressive—and effective—organizer, sometimes spending millions on campaigns to organize just a handful of workers in order to prove a point. He's no less aggressive when it comes to labor unions themselves: In 2004, he led a group of unions, including SEIU and the Teamsters, to form the Change to Win Coalition, the product of his dissatisfaction with the national AFL-CIO's strategic direction. While Raynor may like organizing workers, he doesn't like his own workers organizing—he's taken every opportunity to try and keep UNITE HERE staff from forming their own employee union.

Keeping score

Raynor makes $351,000 annually for his duties at UNITE HERE.

Personal

Raynor lives with his third wife, Joan, in Nyack; he's fathered five kids by his three wives. UNITE HERE is something of a family business: Raynor's older brother Harris is the union's southern regional director and international VP.