What I Do
IBEW keeps San Francisco's cable cars running.
IBEW keeps San Francisco's cable cars running.
Las Vegas—one of the great modern success stories for working people—was the proving ground of John Wilhelm, a giant of a labor leader who was elected president of UNITE HERE at its first constitutional convention in 2009.
John Wilhelm began his career as an organizer and business agent for the former HERE (the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union) in New Haven, Conn., where he had graduated from Yale College two years earlier. He rose quickly, earning a reputation as an innovative and creative organizer who employed tough but fair corporate strategies and was deeply committed to rank-and-file members.
In the 1980s, Wilhelm led the organization of 2,650 clerical and technical employees at Yale. Their successful 1984 strike for a first contract became a nationally known struggle for economic equality for working women.
In 1987, he helped create what became a 10-year revolution in the hotel and gaming industry in Las Vegas. That campaign made the Las Vegas HERE the fastest growing private-sector local union in the country.
John Wilhelm’s formula was simple. It began with excellent contracts for union members and families. It included groundbreaking labor-management cooperative programs, especially in health care and job training. It featured positive relationships with employers, but at its center was an iron toughness against abuse that resulted in a 6-year strike at the Frontier Hotel and Casino. Through it all, the Las Vegas local was a model of rank-and-file participation and leadership and maintained a sterling ethical reputation.
John Wilhelm was appointed president of HERE in 1998 and elected to his first full term as president in 2001. He led his union to join with the union formerly known as UNITE (the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees) to create UNITE HERE. At its founding convention, he was elected president of the new union’s Hospitality Industry.
It would be impossible in this brief space to name all of the ways John Wilhelm has served the members of UNITE HERE, the AFL-CIO and America’s working people. We congratulate him on his retirement and wish him years of happiness.
