Bruce S. Raynor, newly elected president of UNITE -- the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees -- is this year's pre-Labor Day speaker at Cornell University. Unionists consider Raynor a leader in the effort to re-establish unions as a powerful force in U.S. society.

Raynor's public lecture is titled "Global Sweatshops and the Worldwide Labor Movement." It will take place Thursday, Aug. 30, at noon in the Biotechnology Building's G10 lecture hall on the Cornell campus. The talk, which is sponsored by the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), is free and open to the public.

A Cornell ILR School graduate, Class of '72, Raynor was inspired to become a labor organizer by the student activists involved in the civil rights battles of the early '60s. Like them, "I wanted to create a more just society," he said. He went on to play a major part in the successful drive to organize workers at J.P. Stevens, dramatized in the Oscar-winning 1979 movie "Norma Rae."

Raynor has been praised by top management for being a bold and original bargainer and problem solver. "Bruce exemplifies the best of Cornell and the ILR School," wrote Jack Sheinkman, an ILR alumnus who is a past president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. Sheinkman praised Raynor for his role in negotiating "some of the best and most innovative agreements in the nation in one of its most challenging and difficult bargaining environments."

Raynor began his career in 1973 in the education department of the former Textile Workers Union of America, becoming education director in 1974. In the late 1970s, after the TWU merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America to become ACTWU, Raynor became a leader of the merged unions.

While serving as director of ACTWU's southern region, Raynor increased membership by 20,000 over a 10-year period, despite frequent plant closings as textile companies moved their manufacturing facilities overseas. He was elected international vice president of the union in 1981 and executive vice president in 1993, posts he held while concurrently managing the southern region. In 1995 ACTWU merged with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union to form UNITE, and Raynor was elected executive vice president of the merged unions. He became secretary-treasurer in 1998 and president in July 2001.

Raynor is responsible for the union's successful organizing and bargaining agenda, negotiating with such brand-name firms as Levi Strauss & Co., Liz Claiborne and Pillowtex-Fieldcrest-Cannon. Most recently he led UNITE's successful drive to organize the industrial laundry industry, adding 40,000 workers to the union's ranks. UNITE now also represents workers in the distribution, auto parts and supply, millinery, shoe, glove and tanning, bag and packaging, retail and related industries as well as all Xerox manufacturing workers in the United States and Canada.

During a visit to Cornell's campus as part of the ILR School's Union Days in November 1999, Raynor talked to students about the value to society of labor organizing: "Unions give working people the ability to have power over their own lives," he said. Helping workers "achieve a better life, one with dignity and respect and the economic advantages they are entitled to is one of the noblest causes. We represent what's best in America."

Raynor has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Cornell University since 1989 and serves on the New York State Statutory College Affairs Committee of that board. He also serves on the Advisory Committee for the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations. In 1999, Raynor received the ILR School Groat award for distinguished alumni. He was elected to the AFL-CIO Executive Council this August.

The talk and other Pre-Labor Day events are part of an annual ILR School celebration. Classes are suspended for a few hours to permit students to attend the talk and picnic that follows. For further information, contact Professor Richard Hurd, (607) 255-2765.