The nation's two biggest garment workers' unions announced yesterday that they plan to merge by the middle of this year, saying they need to join forces to reverse a long decline in membership.
If the merger is approved at a convention in June, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union of America, which has 200,000 members, will join the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, with 155,000 members.
The effects of the merger could be widespread, as businesses may be met with stronger organizing drives in the United States and overseas.
The new union would be called the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, or UNITE, and would be the largest industrial union in the Southeast.
In Maryland, the effect was expected to be slight, as union leaders said they had no plans to merge field offices. The ACTWU represents about 1,800 workers in Maryland; the ILGWU about half that many.
Peter Na--, ILGWU's regional director for this area, said the merger was "somewhat long overdue."
"I'm delighted" by the merger, he said. The two unions should have an easy marriage because they are similar, he said. "We traditionally handle women's and children's clothing, and they tend to handle men's clothing. . . . But we are quite similar. We started in the early 1900s, mostly with immigrants in large industrial areas," Mr. Na-- said.
Maryland employers reached yesterday said they did not expect the merger to change their relationship with their union workers.
Joseph Pastore, a manager at Haas Tailoring Co. in Baltimore, where workers have been represented by the ACTWU since the turn of the century, said he did not expect much change from the generally good labor relations.
Mr. Pastore, who was a member of the union for 28 years, said the union has been "very helpful" and has helped set up joint worker-management teams to improve quality. The union represents about 150 of the company's 200 workers.
In announcing the merger, the unions' leaders said UNITE would double their combined spending on recruiting new members. UNITE plans to launch a $10 million international organizing drive next year.
"We now live in a global village, in a global marketplace," ILGWU President Jay Mazur told Reuters news service. "We also intend to become global."
Both unions have seen their membership decline by about half over the past 25 years as American clothing makers shut down, or moved their factories overseas. The ACTWU peaked at 400,000 members in 1976. And the ILGWU has declined even more, falling from a peak of 450,000 in 1968.
Yesterday's announcement had been widely expected by labor historians, who said that declining membership, as well as the trend toward corporate mergers, have forced many unions to join together.
Unions often merge for the same reasons as businesses: to increase their bargaining clout, while reducing administrative costs.
"This is just part of an escalating trend in the last 15 years," said Lynn Mingarelli, who heads the union education program at Dundalk Community College.
Earlier this year, the Newspaper Guild, which represents workers at The Sun and The Evening Sun, announced plans to merge with the Communications Workers of America. And in the past several years, there have been mergers of unions representing workers in grocery stores, ships and construction sites.
Some union historians warned, however, that the merger was only the latest symptom -- not the cure -- to unions' long decline.
Peter Rachleff, who teaches labor history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., said unions were losing members for a variety of reasons -- ranging from low wages overseas to the growing gap between union leadership and its members. Making unions bigger would not necessarily change those trends, he said.
"If you add two unions together, you get one twice as big, but with the same problems as before," he said. "I think the labor movement is in terrible trouble."